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DISCOURSE 
J? 

PRONOUNCED AT THE REQUEST 



THE ESSEX HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 

ON THE 18TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1823, 

IN COMMEMORATION 

OF THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF SALEM, 

IN THE 

STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



BY 



JOSEPH STORY. 



PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE SOCIETY. 



BOSTON: 

HILLIARD, GRAY, LITTLE, AND WILKINS. 

182S. 
L 




DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, to wit . 

DISTRICT CLERK'S OFFICE. 

Be it remembered, that on the twenty-sixth day of September, A. D. 
1828, and in the fifty-third year of the independence of the United States of 
America, Hilliard, Gray, Little, & Wilkins, of said district, have deposited in 
this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the 
words following, to wit : — " A Discourse pronounced at the Request of the 
Essex Historical Society, on the 18th of September, 1828, in Commemoration 
of the first Settlement of Salem, in the State of Massachusetts. By Joseph 
Story." — In conformity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled 
" An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, 
charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times 
therein mentioned : " and also to an act, entitled " An act supplementary to an 
act, entitled ' An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies 
of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during 
the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of 
designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints." 

JNO. W. DAVIS, 
Clerk of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE : 
HILMARD, METCALF, AND COMPANY, 

Printers to tlte University. 



DISCOURSE. 



There are certain epochs in the history of 
nations, which always attract to themselves a last- 
ing interest. They constitute steps in the progress 
or decline of empire, at which we involuntarily pause 
to look back upon the past, or to spell out the for- 
tunes of the future. They become associated with 
our inmost feelings and profoundest reflections. Our 
imaginations embody the time, the place, and the 
circumstances. We drop the intermediate distances 
of space and years, which divide us from them. We 
breathe the very air and spirit of the age itself. We 
gather up the fragments of broken facts, as history 
or tradition has scattered them around us. We 
arrange them with a fond solicitude ; and having 
dressed them out in all the pride and pomp of fair 
array, our hearts kindle at the contemplation ; and 
we exult or mourn, glow with confidence, or bow 
with humiliation, as they pass before us, and we 
realize their connexion with ourselves, the glory 
of our country, or the fate of the world. 



•Of memorable events, few awaken a more lively 
curiosity than the origin of nations. Whence we 
sprung, at what period, from what race, by what 
causes, under what circumstances, for what objects, 
are inquiries so natural, that they rise almost spon- 
taneously in our minds ; and scarcely less so in the 
humblest, than in the most exalted of society. They 
are intimately connected with our pride, our char- 
acter, our hopes, and our destiny. He, who may 
look back upon a long line of illustrious ancestors, 
cannot forget, that the blood, stirring in his own 
veins, is drawn from a common source ; and that the 
light, reflected by their virtues, casts upon his own 
path a cheering, even though it may be a distant, 
radiance. And he, who may not claim kindred with 
the mighty dead, feels, that they are the common 
inheritance of his country, and that he has a right to 
share in their fame, and triumph in their achievements. 

Nor let it be supposed, that this strong propen- 
sity of our nature is attributable to the indulgence 
of mere personal or national vanity. It has a higher 
and better origin. It is closely interwoven with that 
reverence and affection, with which we regard our 
parents, and the patriarchs of our own times ; with 
that gratitude, with which we follow the benefactors 
of our race ; with that piety, which reads in every 
event the superintendence of a wise and benevolent 
Providence ; with that charity, which binds up our 
interests in those of mankind at large ; with that 
sympathy, which links our fate with that of all past 
and future generations ; and with that sense of duty, 
which the consciousness of trusts of unmeasured 



extent never fails to elevate and strengthen. Above 
all, we are thus enabled to extract from remote events 
that instruction, which the vicissitudes of human life 
should press home to our own business and bosoms. 
The toils and misfortunes incident to infant settle- 
ments ; the slow progress even of successful effort ; 
the patience, fortitude, and sagacity, by which evils 
are overcome or diminished ; the fundamental causes, 
which quicken or retard their growth; these all 
furnish lessons, which improve the wise, correct the 
rash, and alarm the improvident. 

Two hundred years have just elapsed, since our 
forefathers landed on these shores for the perma- 
nent plantation of New-England. I say emphat- 
ically, for the permanent plantation of New-England. 
There had been before that period various adven- 
turers, who from curiosity, or necessity, or hope of 
gain, explored the coast ; but their purposes were 
transient, or their stay short. There had been here 
and there little establishments for fishery, or trade, 
successively taken up and abandoned, from the rigors 
of the climate, the unprofitableness of the employ- 
ment, or the disappointments naturally following 
upon such novel enterprises. Few persons (com- 
paratively speaking) had turned their thoughts to this, 
as a land favorable for the cultivation of the soil, or 
the arts of social life. It promised little to the 
European, who should leave his native country with 
a fancy warm with descriptions of the luxuriance 
of this western world, and hoping to pass the residue 
of his life, as ' one long summer day of indolence ' 
and ease. It offered no mines glittering with gold 



and silver to tempt the avarice of the selfish, or to 
stimulate the hopes of the ambitious. It presented 
an irregular and rocky front, lashed by the waves of 
a stormy ocean, and frowning with dark forests and 
bleak promontories. Its rough and stubborn soil 
yielded with reluctance to the labors of the husband- 
man ; and the severities of a northern winter for 
almost half the year stripped the earth of its 
vegetation by its bitter blasts, or drifting snows. 
It required stout hands and stouter hearts to 
encounter such discouragements ; to subdue the 
ruggedness of nature, and to wait the slow returns, 
which perseverance and industry alone could rea- 
sonably hope to obtain. Men must have strong 
motives to lead them, under such circumstances, to 
such a choice. It was not an enterprise, which, 
being conceived in a moment of rashness, might by 
its quick success plead its own justification. It had 
none of the allurements of power, or the indulgences 
of pleasure, or the offerings of fame, to give it attrac- 
tions. Higher motives, and deeper thoughts, such 
as engross the passions and the souls of men, and 
sink into comparative insignificance the comforts of 
social life, are alone adequate to produce such re- 
sults. One might well say, as Tacitus did of the 
Germany of his own times,* ' Quis porro, praeter 
periculum horridi et ignoti maris, Asia aut Africa 
aut Italia relicta, Germaniam peteret, informem 
terris, asperam coelo, tristem cultu aspectuque, nisi 
si patria sit ? ' Who, independently of the perils of a 



♦Hutchinson, in his History (vol. i. p. 2) cites the passage. It is from 
Tacitus de Moribus Gcrmanicc, c. 2. 



terrific and unknown sea, would leave the soft cli- 
mates of Asia, Africa, or Europe, and fix his abode 
in a land rough and uncultivated, with an inclement 
sky and a dreary aspect, unless indeed it were his 

mother country! 

It should excite no surprise, therefore, that a 
century had passed away after the Cabots discov- 
ered the southern part of this continent, and yet the 
Aborigines remained there in undisturbed security. 
Even the neighbouring colony of Plymouth, where the 
renowned Pilgrims, under Carver, Bradford, and 
Winslow, had already raised the standard of liberty 
and the cross, was encountering the severest trials, 
and struggling almost for existence. There were 
not a few friends, who began to entertain fears, 
that unless succours came in from other quarters, this 
noble band of worthies, worn down by hardships and 
discouragements, might be destined, at no distant 
period, to follow the fate of other adventurers, or be 
reduced to a narrow factory.* Their original 
scheme of colonization involved in it some fatal 
defects, which were afterwards corrected by their 
own wisdom and experience. The notion of a com- 
munity of property and profits was utterly incompat- 
ible with the growth of a state. It cut off at a blow 
every excitement to individual enterprise ; and by 
its unequal distribution of burthens and benefits 
sowed far and wide the elements of discord, lhe 
followers of the excellent Robinson might, indeed, 
comfort themselves with the present possession of 

* 2 Hutch. Hist. 468, 469, 470, 472,476; Prince's Annals, 26S ; Robert- 
son's America, book 10 ; 3 Hist. Collect. 417. 



8 

a refuge from religious oppression ; but the possibil- 
ity of a dissolution of their connexion at any period, 
however remote, must, whenever it was suggested, 
have filled their hearts with sorrow, and, even when 
least indulged, sometimes have disturbed their peace. 
Their own language in defence of their settlement at 
Hartford affords a striking picture of their situation. 
* They lived upon a barren place, where they were 
by necessity cast ; and neither they, nor theirs could 
long continue upon the same ; and why should they 
be deprived of that, which they had provided, and 
intended to remove to, as soon as they were able ? * 
At the distance of ten years from their first landing, 
the colony could scarcely number three hundred 
inhabitants ; f a proof, at once, of the magnitude of 
their difficulties, and of the heroic zeal and perse- 
verance, which met them without shrinking or 
dismay. 

By the blessing of God, however, our Fathers 
also came hither, and, in connexion with the good 
i Old Colony,' fixed henceforth, and, as we fondly 
trust, for ever, the settlement and destiny of New- 
England. And we are met, on the very spot first 
trodden by their footsteps, on the very day first wel- 
coming their arrival, to celebrate this memorable 
event. It is fit, that we should so do. What occa- 
sion could occur more worthy of our homage 1 
What recollections could rise up, better adapted to 
awaken our gratitude, cheer our hearts, and elevate 



* 2 Hutch. Hist. 46.9, &c. 

\ Robertson's America, hook x. p. 267; Chalmers's Asnals, p. 97. See also 
the Commissioners' Report in 1GG5 (3 Hutch. Collect. 417.) 



our thoughts 1 Who is he that can survey this goodly 
land, and not feel a present sense of its various 
blessings ? Let him cast his eyes over our moun- 
tains, or our vallies, our deep forests, or our culti- 
vated plains. Let him visit our villages, and hamlets, 
and towns, thickening on every side, and lisien to 
the sounds of busy, contented, thrifty industry. Let 
him view the green meadows, and the waving fields, 
and the rich orchards, rising under his eyes in alter- 
nate order, yielding their products in profusion, and 
quickened into fertility by the labors of man. Let 
him hold communion with the inhabitants of these 
peaceful abodes, with the mountaineers, and peas- 
ants, and yeomen, the lords of the soil, the reapers 
of their own harvests, who look proudly down upon 
their own inheritance. Let him learn from them 
the resolute spirit, the manly virtues, the intelligence 
and piety, which pervade New-England. Let him 
glance at the neighbouring metropolis ; its splendid 
spires glittering in the sun ; its noble hospitals and 
public charities ; its crowded and well-built streets ; 
its beautiful harbour, floating on its bosom the com- 
merce of the world, and reflecting on its surface 
islands, and islets, and shores of ever varying mag- 
nificence ; its amphitheatre of hills, whose gentle 
slopes whiten with neat mansions, or soften into 
shade, under the joint ministry of nature and art ; 
its lofty halls, where eloquence has burst forth in 
strains of patriotism, which have made captive the 
souls of thousands ; its visible industry, and enter- 
prise, and public spirit, gathering into the lap of a 
common mother the products of all climates, and 
2 



10 



spreading out a generous hospitality. Let him catch 
in 'the distant reach the walls of our venerable 
University, cemented by the solid strength of cen- 
turies, where learning and religion obtained their 
early glory, and will, we trust, receive their latest 
praise ; — let Jhim, I say, contemplate these scenes, 
and survey this goodly heritage, and who is he, even 
though a stranger to us and ours, whose voice shall 
not eagerly ask our lineage, our ancestry, our age 1 
Who is he, that here inhales his natal air, and embraces 
his mother earth, and does not rejoice, that he was 
born for this day, and is privileged to pour out his 
thanks, and offer up his prayers at the home of his 
forefathers ? 

To us, indeed, who own the local genius, and 
feel the inspirations of the place, the day may well 
be presumed to be crowded with thick-coming fan- 
cies and joyance. We may not turn our eyes on 
any side without meeting objects to revive the im- 
ages of the primitive times. We can still realize 
the fidelity of the description of the voyager of 1629, 
who said, ' We passed the curious and difficult en- 
trance into the large, spacious harbour of Naimkeake ; 
and as we passed along, it was wonderful to behold 
so many islands replenished with thick wood, and 
high trees, and many fair green pastures.' The 
woods have disappeared ; but the islands and the 
fair green pastures remain with more than native 
beauty ; and the rivers still meander in their early 
channels. This ' city of peace,' so called by our 
fathers, as significant of their enjoyment of civil and 
religious freedom, still boasts its ancient name ; still 



11 

justifies the original allusion to the scriptures, * In 
Salem also is God's tabernacle, and his dwelling- 
place in Zion.'* The thin and scattered settlements 
can no longer be traced. But in their stead are 
found spacious streets, and neat dwellings, and lively 
schools, and numerous churches, and busy marts, 
and all the fair accompaniments of opulence and 
knowledge, simplicity of life and manners, unobtru- 
sive refinement, and social kindness. Yet in the 
midst of these blessed changes, we can point out 
the very spot, where the first flock was gathered, 
and the first church consecrated to the service of the 
living God ; where the meek and learned Higgin- 
son (alas, how soon to perish !) first raised his voice 
in prayer, and with trembling lips, and pale cheeks, 
where sorrow and sickness had worn many an early 
furrow, discoursed most eloquently of life, and 
death, and immortality, the triumphs of faith, and 
the rewards of obedience. Yes, it is still devoted 
to the same holy purpose. There, the voice of 
praise, and thanksgiving, and prayer still ascends 
from pious hearts ; there, the doctrines of salvation 
are still preached with enlightened zeal and charity ; 
there, the humble, the contrite, and the pure still 
assemble in sweet communion, and worship God in 
spirit and in truth, f The sepulchres of our fore- 
fathers are also among us. We can trace them 
through all their various labors to their last appointed 
home ; * sedes ubi fata quietas ostendunt.' Time 



* 1 Historical Collections, 117; Psalm lxxvi. 

f See the excellent dedication sermon of the Rev. Mr Upham, one of the 
Pastors of this church, in November, 1826. 



12 

has not yet levelled the incumbent sod, nor the moss 
overgrown the frail memorials erected to their 
worth. But their noblest monument is around us, 
and before us. Their deeds speak their eulogy in 
a manner, which it requires no aid of language to 
heighten. They live in their works, not indeed in 
the perishable structures of human skill, in marble 
domes or triumphal arches, in temples or in palaces, 
the wonders of art ; but in the enduring institutions, 
which they created, in the principles, which they 
taught, and by which they sought to live, and for which 
they were ready to die. On these they laid the 
solid foundations of our strength and glory ; and on 
these, if on any thing human, may be written the 
words of immortality. Our graveyards offer no 
better epitaph for them, than that, Here lie the 
Founders of New-England ; and brief though it be, 
and of simple phrase, it has a pregnant meaning, the 
extent of which no human mind has yet grasped. It 
can be unfolded only with the destiny of our latest 
posterity. 

May I venture on some allusions not unbecoming 
this occasion, and yet of a nature somewhat personal, 
though not, I trust, obtrusive. I speak in the pres- 
ence of the descendants of these men. Their names 
sound with familiar welcome in our streets, and 
greet us on every side, as we pass along. They 
seem to live again in their offspring. Their images 
grace our processions, and throng our churches, and 
enliven our festivals. We feel almost as in their 
conscious presence, and listen to the voices of other 
days. When in the enthusiasm of poetry we are 



13 

asked, < And the pilgrims, where are they 1 ' Where 
are Winthrop, and Endicott, and Higginson, and Dud- 
ley, and Saltonstall, and Bradstreet, and Pickering, 
and Sprague, and Pynchon, and Hathorne, and Co- 
nant, and Woodbury, and Palfrey, and Balch, and the 
other worthies ? We are ready to exclaim, — They 
are here. This is their home. These are their 
children. 

There is yet among us One, who brings their 
revered forms before us with peculiar dignity, and 
is at once the representative of their age and our 
own. Generation after generation has passed away, 
and yet he survives, the model, and the monument 
of a century. His early youth almost clasped the 
knees of the pilgrims. He was familiar with their 
sons, and listened to their story from the lips of those, 
who painted with the vividness of contemporaries, 
and with the feelings of Puritans. Standing upon 
the very verge of the first century, he seems the 
living herald of the first settlers, breathing into our 
souls their very words and sentiments, as one, who 
speaks not for the dead, but for those, who yet so- 
journ on the earth. Time in his favor has relaxed 
his wonted course, and touched even the faded 
graces of the past with a kind and mellowing charm. 
If one were to task his imagination to portray a 
patriarch of primitive simplicity, warmed with the 
refinements of these latter days, he could scarcely 
clothe the being of his own creation with other 
qualities than we have seen. He could not fail to 
point out to us a form, venerable for wisdom, learning, 
and modesty, in which the spirit of philosophy and 



14 

benevolence was sustained by meekness and piety ; 
in "which blamelessness of life, cheerfulness of heart, 
and gratitude for past blessings, imparted solid lustre 
to a faith, and hope, and joy, resting upon immor- 
tality. Well may it be asked of such a being in the 
tender language of Scripture, * And the old man, of 
whom ye spake, is he yet alive ? ' Your own hearts 
have already answered the question. We have seen 
this centennial patriarch ; and we count it among 
the triumphs of this day, that he yet lives, the delight 
of his friends, the crown of his profession, and the 
ornament of human nature. 

Such are some of the circumstances and associa- 
tions, belonging to the festival, which has assembled 
us together. I am but too sensible, how utterly 
inadequate my own powers are to meet the exigen- 
cies of such a day. I have not been unconscious 
of the difficulties of the task ; and I now stand here 
with sincere self-distrust, having yielded to a sense 
of duty, what I should gladly have declined, if left 
to my own choice. After all, however, the occasion 
carries along with it its own means of gratification, 
in the thoughts of home, and kindred, and ancestry, 
and country, which rise in every heart, and hang on 
every tongue. If I falter in the course, I may well 
share this consolation, since a common sympathy 
must disarm the severity of criticism. 

Many topics, appropriate to this celebration, have 
already been discussed by others in a manner, which 
does not require, even if it should admit of farther 
illustration. The genius of New England has em- 
ployed some of its best efforts to add dignity to 



15 



the scene. History and tradition have been laid 
under contribution to adorn the narrative ; and phi- 
losophy itself, while studying the events, has unfold- 
ed speculations, as profound and engrossing, as any, 
which can engage the human mind. I profess not 
the rashness to follow in the high course thus marked 
out ; content to walk in the ancient paths, and to 
gather, as I may, the gleanings of a harvest, which 
has so amply rewarded the labors of my predeces- 



sors. 



My object is to furnish you with a brief sketch 
of the origin of the colony ; of the motives, which 
led to the enterprise ; of the characters of the men, 
who conducted it ; of the principles, upon which it 
was established ; and of the grand results, which it 
has hitherto developed. I shall also adventure upon 
some topics, where the conduct of our ancestors 
has been severely put to question ; and without at- 
tempting to disguise their mistakes, I trust, that 
something may be said to rescue their memories 
from unmerited reproaches. 

If the origin of nations be, as it confessedly is, a 
source of deep interest, there are circumstances 
connected with the first settlement of New-England 
peculiarly to gratify a national pride. We do not 
trace ourselves back to times of traditionary dark- 
ness, where truth and fiction are blended at every 
step, and what remains, after the closest investiga- 
tion, is but conjecture, or shadowy fact. We do not 
rely upon the arts of the poet to give dignity to the 
narrative, and invest it with the colorings of his 
imagination. Greece might delight to trace her 



16 

origin up to the high renown and antiquity of 
Egypt; and Rome soothe-herself with her rise from 
the smouldering ruins of Troy. We have no legends, 
which genius may fashion into its own forms, and 
crowd with imaginary personages. Such as it is, 
our history lies far within the reach of the authentic 
annals of mankind. It has been written by contem- 
poraries with a simplicity, which admits of no em- 
bellishment, and a fidelity, which invites scrutiny. 
The records are before us, sketched by the first 
adventurers ; and there we may learn all their wan- 
derings and cares, and sufferings and hopes, their 
secret thoughts and their absorbing motives. We 
can ask of the world no credit for modern state- 
ments of old events. We can conceal nothing ; and 
our true glory is, that there is nothing, which we 
wish to conceal. And yet, I think, whoever shall 
read these annals in their minute details ; whoever 
shall bring home to his thoughts the causes and 
consequences of these events ; whoever shall watch 
the struggles of conscience against the seductions 
of affection, and the pressure of dangers ; will feel 
his soul touched with a moral sublimity, which 
poetry itself could not surpass. So mighty is truth ; 
so irresistible is the voice of nature. 

Take but a single passage in their lives, the open- 
ing scene of that drama, on which we seem but just 
yl to have entered. Go back, and meet the first de- 
tachment, the little band, which, under the guidance 
of the worthy, intelligent, and intrepid Endicott, 
landed on the neighbouring shore. It was then, as 
it is now, the early advance of autumn. What can 



17 



be more beautiful or more attractive, than this season 
in New-England The sultry heat of summer has pass- 
ed away ; and a delicious coolness at evening succeeds 
the genial warmth of the day. The labors of the hus- 
bandman approach their natural termination; and he 
gladdens with the near prospect of h.s promised re- 
ward The earth swells with the increase of vegeta- 
tion ' The fields wave with their yellow and luxuriant 
harvests. The trees put forth their darkest foliage, 
half shading and half revealing their ripened fruits, 
to tempt the appetite of man, and proclaim the good- 
ness of his Creator. Even in scenes of another 
sort, where nature reigns alone in her own majesty, 
there is much to awaken religious enthusiasm. As 
yet the forests stand clothed in their dress of unde- 
cayed magnificence. The winds, that rustle through 
their tops, scarcely disturb the silence of the shades 
below. The mountains and the vallies glow in warm 
green, or lively russet. The rivulets flow on with a 
noiseless current, reflecting back the images of many 
a glossy insect, that dips his wings in their cooling 
waters. The mornings and evenings are still vocal 
with the notes of a thousand warblers, who plume 
their wings for a later flight. Above all, the clear 
blue sky, the long and sunny calms, the scarcely 
whispering breezes, the brilliant sunsets, lit up with 
all the wondrous magnificence of light and shade 
and color, and slowly settling down into a pure and 
transparent twilight ;-These, these are days and 
scenes, which even the cold cannot behold without 
emotion; but on which the meditative and pious 
gaze with profound admiration ; for they breathe ot 
holier and happier regions beyond the grave. , 



18 

But lovely as is this autumn, so finely characteriz- 
ed as the Indian Summer of New-England, and so 
favorably contrasting itself with the chills and mois- 
ture of the British Isles, let us not imagine, that it 
appeared to these Pilgrims, as it does to us, clothed 
in smiles. Their first steps on this continent were 
doubtless with that buoyancy of spirit, which relief 
from the tediousness and dangers of a sea voyage 
naturally excites. But, think you, that their first 
hasty glances around them did not bring some anxie- 
ties for the future, and some regrets for the past 1 
They were in the midst of a wilderness, untrodden 
by civilized man. The native forests spread around 
them, with only here and there a detached glade, 
which the Indian tomahawk had levelled, or the 
fisherman cleared for his temporary hut. There were 
no houses inviting to repose ; no fields ripening with 
corn ; no cheerful hearths ; no welcoming friends ; 
no common altars. The heavens, indeed, shone fair 
over their heads ; and the earth beneath was rich in 
its beauties. But where was their home ? Where 
were those comforts and endearments, which that 
little word crowds into our hearts in the midst of the 
keenest sufferings ? Where were the objects, to 
which they might cling to relieve their thoughts from 
the sense of present desolation? If there were 
some, who could say with an exile of the succeeding 
year, ' We rested that night with glad and thankful 
hearts, that God had put an end to our long and 
tedious journey through the greatest sea in the 
w r orld ;'* there were many, whose pillows were wet 

* 3 Hutch. Collect. 44. 



19 

with bitter, though not repentant, tears. Many a 
father offered his evening prayer with trembling ac- 
cents ; many a mother clasped her children to her 
bosom in speechless agony. The morrow came ; 
but it brought no abatement of anxiety. It was 
rather a renewal of cares, of sad reminiscences, of 
fearful forebodings. 

This is no idle picture of the fancy, tricked out 
for effect, to move our sympathies, or blind us to the 
real facts. How could their situation be otherwise 1 
They were not fugitives from justice, seeking to bury 
themselves and their crimes in some remote corner 
of the earth. They were not prodigals, endeavouring 
to retrieve their wrecked fortunes in distant adven- 
tures. They were not idle and luxurious wanderers, 
weary of society, and panting for unexplored novel- 
ties. They had left a country full of the refinements 
of social life, and dear to them by every human tie. 
There were the tombs of their ancestors ; there the 
abodes of their friends ; of mothers, who kissed their 
pale cheeks on the seashore ; of sisters, who wrung 
their hands in sharp distress ; of children, who dropped 
upon their knees, and asked a blessing at parting, 
ay, at parting for ever. There was the last, linger- 
ing embrace ; there the last sight of the white cliffs 
of England, which had faded from their straining 
gaze, for time, and for eternity. There for the last 
time were uttered from their broken voices, ' Fare- 
well, dear England ; farewell, the church of God in 
England ; farewell, all Christian friends there.' * 

* Eliot's Dictionary, Art. Higginson, 252. 



20 

They were now landed on other shores. The 
excitements of the voyage were gone. Three thou- 
sand miles of ocean rolled between them and the 
country they had left ; and every illusion of hope 
had vanished before the sober realities of a wilder- 
ness. They had now full leisure for reflection, 

. . . . ' while busy, meddling memory, 
In barbarous succession mustered up 
The past endearments of their 6ofter hours, 
Tenacious of its theme.' 

There is nothing so depressing in exile, as that 
sickness of the heart, which comes over us with the 
thoughts of a lost, distant home. There is nothing, 
which softens the harsh features of nature, like the 
feeling, that this is our country. The exiles of New- 
England saw not before them either a home, or a 
country. Both were to be created. 

If the past could bring few consolations, the fu- 
ture was not without its embarrassments. The 
season was passed, in which any addition could be 
made to their scanty stock of provisions from the 
produce of the soil. No succours could reach them 
until the ensuing spring ; and even then, they were 
subject to many contingencies. The winter must 
soon approach with its bleak winds, and desolating 
storms. The wild beasts were in the woods ; and 
the scarcely less savage Indians lurked in the rav- 
ines, or accosted them with questionable friendship. 
Trees were to be felled, and houses built, and forti- 
fications arranged, as well for shelter as for safety ; 
and brief was the space, and feeble the means to 
accomplish these necessary defences. Beyond these 



21 



were the unknown dangers of change of climate, 
and new habits of life, and scanty food ; of the pes- 
tilence, that walketh in darkness, and the famine, 
that wasteth at noonday. These were discourage- 
ments, which might well appal the timid, and subdue 
the rash. It is not, then, too much to affirm again, 
that it required stout hands and stouter hearts to 
overcome such difficulties. But 

'If misfortune comes, she brings along 
The bravest virtues.' 

The men, who landed here, were no ordinary men; 
the motive for their emigration was no ordinary 
motive ; and the glory of their achievement has few 
parallels in the history of the world. Their perse- 
verance in the midst of hardships, their firmness in 
the midst of dangers, their patience in the midst of 
sufferings, their courage in the midst of disasters, 
their unconquerable spirit, their unbending adhe- 
rence to their principles, their steady resistance of 
all encroachments, surprise us even more than the 
wisdom of their plans, and the success of their 

operations. 

If we trace on the colony during the two or three 
next succeeding years, in which it received an ac- 
cession of almost two thousand persons, we shall find 
abundant reason to distrust those early descriptions, of 
which the just complaint was, that < honest men, out 
of a desire to draw over others to them, wrote some- 
what hyperbolically of many things here/ and 'by 
their too large commendations of the country, and 
the commodities thereof, so strongly invited others 



22 

to go on;'* and to express our astonishment, that 
the enterprise was not instantly abandoned. Many 
of those, who accompanied Endicott, died in the 
ensuing winter by disease from exposure, and want 
of food, and suitable medical assistance. They were 
reinforced in the next summer by new colonists 
with fresh supplies ; and again in the succeeding 
year, when the Corporation itself was also removed 
under the auspices of Winthrop, Dudley, Johnson, 
Saltonstall, and others. What was then the state of 
the Colony? We are told by a friend and eye-wit- 
ness f — 'We found the Colony,' says he, 'in a sad 
and unexpected condition; above eighty of them' 
(that is, more than one quarter of the whole number) 
* being dead the winter before ; and many of those 
alive weak and sick ; all the corn and bread amongst 
them all hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight. , 
He adds, ' If any come hither to plant for worldly 
ends, that can live well at home, he commits an 
error, of which he will soon repent him.' — ' In a 
word, we have little to be envied ; but endure much 
to be pitied in the sickness and mortality of our 
people.' And then in the conclusion of this memo- 
rable letter he breaks out with the unconquerable 
spirit of Puritanism — ' We are left a people poor, 
and contemptible ; yet such as trust in God ; and 
are contented with our own condition, being well 
assured, that he will not fail us, nor forsake us.' 
Men, who were thus prepared to encounter such 
distresses, were prepared for every thing. The 



* Governor DuAley'i Letter, 3 Hist. Coll. 3G, 38, 43. 
f Id. Ibid. p. 38. 



23 



stake had no terrors for them ; and earth had no re- 
wards, which could for a moment withdraw them 
from the dictates of conscience and duty. 

This year was, indeed, still more disastrous than 
the preceding, and robbed them of some of their 
brightest ornaments. Before December the grave 
had closed upon two hundred of their number; and 
among these were some of the most accomplished 
of both sexes. It is impossible, even at this distance 
of time, to contemplate their character and late, 
without the deepest sympathy. Higgmson, the re- 
vered and beloved teacher of the first flock, fell 
an early victim, in the forty-third year of his age, 
and the first of his ministry. Let me pause for a 
moment to pay a passing tribute to his worth. He 
received his education at Emanuel College in Cam- 
bridge where he was so much distinguished by his 
talents, acquirements, and scholarship, that he gain- 
ed an early introduction into a benefice of the church. 
The arguments of Hildersham and Hooker, however, 
soon infused scruples into his mind respecting the 
doctrines and discipline of the establishment, and 
he was ejected for nonconformity. He then taught 
a few pupils for the maintenance of his family ; and 
havin- received an invitation to remove to New- 
En-knd, in the hope of restoring his health, and 
animated by the glorious prospect of a free enjoy- 
ment (as he expresses it) ' of the true religion and 
holy ordinances of Almighty God,' he embarked with 
his family in the Talbot in 1629. In the course of 
the voyage he had the misfortune to lose one ol his 
daughters, of whose death he gives us an account in 



24 

his journal, drawn up with a simplicity beautifully 
illustrative of his own character. ' And so,' says 
he, ' it was God's will the child died about five 
o'clock at night, being the first in our ship, that was 
buried in the bowels of the great Atlantic sea ; 
which, as it was a great grief to us, her parents, and 
a terror to all the rest, as being the beginning of a 
contagious disease and mortality, so in the same 
judgment it pleased God to remember mercy in the 
child, in forcing it from a world of misery, wherein 
she had lived all her days.' And, after an allusion to 
her personal infirmities, he concludes, ' So that in 
respect of her we had cause to take her death as a 
blessing from the Lord to shorten her misery.'* 
Alas ! he was destined too soon to follow her. Not 
many months elapsed before a consumption settled 
on his cheeks, and by its hectic flushes betrayed an 
irretrievable decline. He died with the composure, 
resignation, and christian confidence of a saint, 
leaving behind him a character, in which learning, 
benignity of manners, purity of life, fervent piety, 
and unaffected charity, were blended with most at- 
tractive grace ; and his name is enrolled among the 
earliest and truest benefactors of New-England. 

A death scarcely less regretted,, and which follow- 
ed with a fearful rapidity, was that of a lady of noble 
birth, elegant accomplishments, and exemplary vir- 
tues. I speak of the Lady Arabella Johnson,! a 
daughter of the Earl of Lincoln, who accompanied 



* 3 Hutch. Collect. 32, 36. 

f Her name is commonly spelt in the records of that day, possibly as an 
abbreviation, ' Arbelki.' 



25 

her husband in the embarkation under Winthrop, and 
in honor of whom, the admiral ship on that occasion 
was called by her name. She died in a very short 
time after her arrival ; and lies buried near the 
neighbouring shore. No stone or other memorial 
indicates the exact place ; but tradition has preserv- 
ed it with a holy reverence. The remembrance of 
her excellence is yet fresh in all our thoughts ; and 
many a heart still kindles with admiration of her vir- 
tues ; and many a bosom heaves with sighs at her 
untimely end. What, indeed, could be more touch- 
ing than the fate of such a woman ? What example 
more striking than hers, of uncompromising affection 
and piety ? Born in the lap of ease, and surrounded 
by affluence ; with every prospect which could make 
hope gay, and fortune desirable ; accustomed to the 
splendors of a court, and the scarcely less splendid 
hospitalities of her ancestral home ; she was yet 
content to quit, what has, not inaptly, been termed 
' this paradise of plenty and pleasure,' for * a wilder- 
ness of wants,' and with a fortitude superior to the 
delicacies of her rank and sex, to trust herself to an 
unknown ocean and a distant climate, that she might 
partake, with her husband, the pure and spiritual 
worship of God. To the honor, to the eternal 
honor of her sex, be it said, that in the path of duty 
no sacrifice is with them too high, or too dear. 
Nothing is with them impossible, but to shrink from 
what love, honor, innocence, religion, requires. The 
voice of pleasure or of power may pass by unheed- 
ed ; but the voice of affliction never. The chamber 
of the sick, the pillow of the dying, the vigils of the 
4 



26 

dead, the altars of religion, never missed the pres- 
ence or the sympathies of woman. Timid though 
she be, and so delicate, that the winds of heaven 
may not too roughly visit her ; on such occasions 
she loses all sense of danger, and assumes a preter- 
natural courage, which knows not, and fears not 
consequences. Then she displays that undaunted 
spirit, which neither courts difficulties, nor evades 
them ; that resignation, which utters neither murmur 
nor regret ; and that patience in suffering, which 
seems victorious even over death itself. 

The Lady Arabella perished in this noble under- 
taking, of which she seemed the ministering angel ; 
and her death spread universal gloom throughout 
the colony. Her husband was overwhelmed with 
grief at the unexpected event, and survived her but 
a single month. Governor Winthrop has pronoun- 
ced his eulogy in one short sentence. * He was a holy 
man, and wise, and died in sweet peace.' He was 
truly the idol of the people ; and the spot selected 
by himself for his own sepulture became consecrated 
in their eyes ; so that many left it as a dying request, 
that they might be buried by his side. Their re- 
quest prevailed ; and the Chapel Burying-ground 
in Boston, which contains his remains, became from 
that time appropriated to the repose of the dead.* 
Perhaps the best tribute to this excellent pair is, that 
time, which, with so unsparing a hand, consigns 
statesmen and heroes, and even sages to oblivion, 



* l Hutch. Hist. 16 ; 1 Winthrop's Journal, 34 ; Eliot's Dictionary, Art. 
Johnson. 



27 

has embalmed the memory of their worth, and pre- 
served it among the choicest of New-England relics. 
It can scarcely be forgotten, but with the annals of 
our country. 

I have dwelt with some particularity, perhaps 
with undue solicitude, upon some of the circumstan- 
ces attending the emigration of our forefathers. 
They are necessary to a full comprehension of the 
difficulties of the enterprise, and of the sufferings, 
which they bore, I will not say with fortitude merely, 
but with cheerful, unrepining resolution. It is not 
by a few set phrases, or a few strong touches, that 
we can paint their sorrows, or their struggles, their 
calmness, when their friends were falling around 
them, and themselves were placed at the 

' dreadful post 

Of observation, darker every hour ; ' 

or their courage at the approach of dangers of another 
sort. Many of them went down to an early grave 
without the consolation even in vision of an ulti- 
mate triumph ; and many, who lived to partake it, 
grappled with hardships, the plain recital of which 
would appal more than the most studied exaggera- 
tions of rhetoric. But (let me repeat it) thanks 
be to God, their efforts were successful. They 
laid the foundations of empire in these northern 
regions with slow and thoughtful labor. Our rever- 
ence for their services should rest, not upon the fic- 
tions of fancy, but upon a close survey of their means 
and their ends, their motives and their lives, their 
characters and their actions. And I am much mis- 
taken, if that close survey does not invigorate our 



28 

patriotism, confirm our principles, and deepen and 
widen the channels of our gratitude. 

The history of colonies, both in ancient and mod- 
ern times, may be generally traced back to the 
ambition of princes, the love of adventure or gain, 
the pressure of poverty, or the necessity of a refuge 
from political oppressions. The ancient nations, for 
the most part, transplanted colonies to distant re- 
gions, to extend the boundaries of their power, and 
consolidate their strength. They were sometimes 
outposts of the empire, to hold in check a conquer- 
ed province, and sometimes military stations to over- 
awe and watch a formidable rival. The beautiful 
regions of Asia Minor were peopled with Grecian 
tribes, by the attractions of a fertile soil and delicious 
climate, by the passion for conquest, by the tempta- 
tions of eastern luxury, and by the ostracisms of 
successive factions. Rome gathered them within the 
folds of her ample domain, as the booty of her arms ; 
and pushed her own colonies only where tribute 
was to be exacted, or distant conquests secured. 
The whole line of her colonies in Gaul, Germany, 
and the North, were but a chain of military commu- 
nications to intercept the inroads of the barbarians, 
and furnish employment for leaders and legions too 
restless and too ambitious for civil life. They were 
at once the sources of her power, and her weakness. 
To them Rome was every thing ; and the colonies 
they occupied, nothing, except as resources and de- 
pots to command the republic, or dictate the succes- 
sion to the imperial purple. The Capitol was but too 
often obedient to the will of a provincial commander, 
and a licentious soldiery. 



29 

The colonies of modern nations owe their origin 
almost exclusively to the spirit of commerce. If 
power has mixed itself among the objects of their 
governments, it has rather been, as a consequence of 
commerce, than an independent motive. Ships, 
commerce, and colonies were so long associated in 
the minds of European statesmen, that they seemed 
inseparable accompaniments. Hence arose that 
system of monopoly, which narrowed down all trade 
to the mother country, and stinted the growth and 
crippled the resources of the colonies to the measure 
of the wants of the former. All Europe, as if by a 
general conspiracy, acted up to the very letter of this 
system for centuries. The general practice was, 
like that attributed to the Dutch in respect to the 
Spice Islands, to destroy all the surplus, beyond 
that which would yield the established rate of profits. 
The South American colonies of France, Spain, and 
Portugal were hermetically sealed against the ap- 
proach of foreign ships, until the mighty revolutions 
of our day crumbled the whole system into dust, 
and opened, almost like an earthquake, a pathway 
through their interior. Even England relaxed her 
grasp with a slow and reluctant caution, yielding 
little, except to necessity, indifferent to the colonial 
interests, and solicitous only that the home market 
should gather up and distribute all the profits and 
products of the Indies. Her famous navigation acts, 
the boast of her statesmen from the times of Crom- 
well down to ours, are an undisguised appropriation 
of the means of the colonies to the policy of the 
mother country. She generally left the plantations 



30 

to the private enterprise of her subjects, until their 
trade was worthy of her interference ; and she then 
assumed the government and regulation of them for 
her own and not for their benefit. Protection be- 
came a duty only at the time when it seemed no 
longer a burthen. Her vast empire in the East, the 
wonder of our day, whose fate furnishes a problem, 
not to be solved by any former experience, is but 
the ill-managed contrivance of a private corporation 
for trade. It affords a curious example of the spirit 
of conquest engrafted on the spirit of commerce ; 
of a government founded on calculations of pro- 
fit ; of a legislation acting on the industry of sixty 
millions of subjects, wholly without representation ; 
of a judicial establishment seeking to administer 
justice by appeals to an unknown code, with entire 
good faith, but wholly inadequate means ; of a polit- 
ical superintendence, which guards against external 
violence, but which sits down contented, while prov- 
inces are plundered, and thrones are overturned, in 
wars brought on by the encroachments of commerce. 
The colonies planted on the continent of North 
America, were in a great measure the offspring of 
private adventure and enterprise, and, with a single 
exception, of the spirit of commerce. That excep- 
tion is New-England ; and it is an exception as 
extraordinary as it is honorable. We owe our ex- 
istence to the love of religion ; and, I may say, 
exclusively to the love of religion. 1 am aware, that 
the council of Plymouth had profitable objects in 
view, and that capital was first embarked, and a 
charter obtained to accomplish these ends. But the 



31 

scheme had little chance of success, and was in fact 
suspended, if not entirely abandoned. The first 
settlement at Plymouth was made solely from mo- 
tives of religion without any charter, and even with- 
out any title to the land. And it was not until the 
charter of 1628 was -obtained, by men whose whole 
hearts were devoted to religion, that the same im- 
pulse effected the colonization of Massachusetts. 
This is not left to tradition ; but is the sober truth of 
history, unquestioned, because unquestionable. It 
has the highest record evidence in its support. It 
has, if possible, even weightier proofs, in the public 
acts of the colony ; in our past and existing institu- 
tions ; in the very errors, as well as the virtues of 
our forefathers. They were Christians ; they were 
Puritans ; they were Christians persecuted by Chris- 
tians ; they were Puritans driven into exile by the 
priesthood. 

The influence of religion upon the human charac- 
ter, is one of the most interesting studies in the 
history of our race. But the influence of Christian- 
ity, whether viewed in respect to the extent of its 
reach, or the nature of its operations, is the most 
instructive of all speculations, which can employ the 
intellect of man. Paganism was indulgent in its 
general policy, for it taught little of duty, and claim- 
ed no exclusive possession of the oracles, or even 
of the favor of its divinities. In truth, it floated round 
the mind with a loose and indeterminate credit, and 
easily admitted into its temples the worship of strange 
gods ; sometimes because their favor might be pro- 
pitiated, or their vengeance averted ; sometimes, 



32 

perhaps, because the relative power, superiority, 
and office of each might not be well adjusted in their 
mythology. Quarrels and divisions about faith and 
doctrines, were of very rare occurrence in the Heath- 
en world ; for their religion dealt more in rites and 
ceremonies, than in fixed belief.* There would be 
little inclination for public struggles, where rewards 
and punishments were supposed to be administered, 
not according to desert, but according to the favor, 
to the passions, and even to the animosities of their di- 
vinities. There could be little responsibility cher- 
ished, where acts, offensive to some, might on that 
very account be grateful to others, of their gods. 
Gibbon's splendid description of the Roman religion 
is true of nearly the whole ancient world. ' The 
various modes of worship, which prevailed in the 
Roman world, were all considered by the people, as 
equally true ; by the philosopher, as equally false ; 
and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus 
toleration produced, not only mutual indulgence, but 
even religious concord.' f 

Far different is the case with Christianity. It 
propounds no equivocal doctrines. It recognises 
no false or foreign gods. It allows no idolatrous 
worship. It presents to all men, one Supreme Being 
the only proper object of worship, unchangeable, 
infinite, omniscient, all-wise, all-good, all-powerful, 
all-merciful, the God of all, and the Father of all. 
It developes one complete system of duties, fit for 
all times, and all stations ; for the monarch on his 



* Bacon's Essays ; 2 Bacon's Works, 257. 

1 1 Gibbon's Hist. ch. 2, p. 46 ; Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, b. 25, ch. 15. 



33 



throne, and the peasant in his eottage. It brings 
all men to the same level, and measures all by the 
sa me standard. It humbles in the dust the proud 
and the arrogant; it gives no heed to the glory of 
princes, or conquerors, or nobles. It exa ts the low y 
virtues the love of peaee, charity, humility, forgive- 
ness, resignation, patience, punty, holiness. It 
teaches a moral and final accountability for every 
action. It proposes sanctions for its precepts of no 
earthly reach ; but such as are infinite, unchangea- 
ble, and eternal. Its rewards are the promises of 
immortal bliss ; its punishments a fearful and over- 
whelming retribution. It excuses no compromises 
of principle and no paltering with sin. It acknowl- 
edges no sacrifices, but of a broken and contrite 
spirit; no pardon, but by repentance of heart and 
reformation of life. In its view, this life is but the 
entrance upon existence; a transitory state of pro- 
bation and trial; and the grave is the portal to that 
better world, 'where God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes ; and there shall be no more death, 
neither sorrow, nor crying, nor shall there be any 

more pain.' c , 

To minds engrossed by such thoughts, and fixed 
iu such belief, what could there be seducing or sat- 
isfying in the things of this world 1 It would be 
impossible for them for a moment to put in competi- 
tion the affairs of time, with the dazzling splen- 
dors and awful judgments of eternity. We need not 
wonder, therefore, that Christianity has had, in all 
ages, and in all sects, its devotees and martyrs, men 
who would endure every evil rather than renounce 



34 

if, whether it were exile, or forfeiture, or torture, or 
death ; that persecution should have been at no 
loss for victims, whenever she had lighted her fires ; 
and that in the very moment of her imagined triumph, 
while her hands were yet reeking with blood, she 
should have felt her own doom sealed, and her own 
power withered. 

The Reformation was the natural result of causes, 
which had been silently working their way from the 
first dawn of the revival of letters. Learning stimu- 
lated inquiry ; inquiry created doubt ; and doubt 
brought on a feverish restlessness for knowledge, 
which must sooner or later have corrected abuses 
and errors, even if political causes had not hastened 
the event. Fortunately for England, fortunately 
for the cause of religion in its most catholic sense, 
the passions of a sanguinary and sensual monarch 
effected at a single blow, what perhaps it would 
otherwise have required ages to accomplish. The 
controversy of Henry the Eighth with the Papal see 
arrested the attention of all Europe, and produced 
in England a deep conviction of the necessity of 
some reformation in the church. It was of course, 
that parties should, upon such an occasion, rally 
under different banners. Many of the dignitaries, 
both of the church and state, resisted every innova- 
tion, as fraught with evil, not merely from a blind 
reverence for antiquity, but also from that sympa- 
thetic dread of change, which belongs to the habits 
of mankind in all ages. Many were ardently 
devoted to the cause of reform ; but wished to 
touch gross abuses only, and thus to pave the way for 



35 

gradual, but solid improvements. Many of deeper 
thought, and warmer zeal, and bolder purposes, 
deemed it matter of conscience to root out every 
error, and to bring back Christianity at once to what 
they esteemed the simplicity of the Gospel. To this 
last class belonged the body of the Puritans, a class 
as distinguished for learning, talents, probity, and 
disinterestedness, as any which adorned their own 
times. It is a mistake commonly enough entertain- 
ed, that they were, in the modern sense, Dissenters ; 
that they were hostile to episcopacy in every shape ; 
and that they pushed their aims to the overthrow of 
all church government. The truth was far other- 
wise. Many of the most distinguished among them 
were reared in the bosom of the church, and sin- 
cerely loved its venerable forms. Their object was 
to reform such of its rites and ceremonies only, as 
they deemed inconsistent with the Scriptures. If in 
the course of events they arrived at different con- 
clusions, it was because prerogative pressed on them 
with a heavy hand ; because prelacy became the 
instrument of persecution; because the laws re- 
specting uniformity under the famous High Commis- 
sion Court trampled upon their rights and conscien- 
ces, and drove them to examine into the scriptural 
foundations of the hierarchy. In all their struggles, 
from the reign of Henry the Eighth to that of James 
the First, the Puritans clung to the establishment 
with a sincerity of affection, which, considering their 
sufferings from papacy and prelacy, is marvellous. 
In the farewell address of our forefathers at the very 
moment of their departure for America, it breaks out 



36 

into expressions of warm and filial attachment. We 
' esteem it our honor,' say they, ' to call the church 
of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother ; 
and cannot part from our native country, where she 
specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, 
and many tears in our eyes, ever acknowledging, 
that such hope and part as we have obtained in the 
common salvation, we have received in her bosom, 
and sucked it from her breasts. We leave it not, 
therefore, as loathing that milk, wherewith we were 
nourished there ; but blessing God for the parentage 
and education, as members of the same body, shall 
always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve 
for any sorrow, that shall ever betide her ; and 
while we have breath, sincerely desire and endeavour 
the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with 
the enlargement of her bounds in the kingdom of 
Christ Jesus.' * 

The Puritans have been divided by an accom- 
plished historian into three parties ; the political Puri- 
tans, who maintained the highest principles of civil 
liberty ; the Puritans in discipline, who were averse 
to the ceremonies and episcopal government of the 
church ; and the doctrinal Puritans, who rigidly de- 
fended the speculative opinions of the first reformers.! 
The remark, such as it is, is applicable to a later 
period ; for at the emigration of our ancestors, 
scarcely any divisions in doctrine existed among the 
Protestants of England. The great controversies 
touched the rites and ceremonies, and the fasts and 

* 1 Hutch. Hist. Appendix, 487, 488. f 6 Hume's Hist. cli. li, p. 272. 



37 

feasts of the church, the vestments of the priesthood, 
kneeling at the altar, the sign of the cross, and the 
manner of celebrating the ordinances. The usages of 
the church in some of these respects were deemed 
by the Puritans unscriptural, the remnants of popery, 
and gross corruptions of religion. In the sincerity 
of their hearts, they could not practise them ; in 
the scruples of their consciences, they felt bound to 
reject them. For this sincerity, for these scruples, 
they were expelled from their benefices ; they were 
subjected to spiritual censures ; they were loaded 
with temporal punishments. They were even com- 
pelled, by penalties, to attend upon a public worship, 
which they abhorred, from the time of Elizabeth 
down to the Revolution of 1688.* The language of 
the haughty James to them was, ' I will have but 
one doctrine, and one discipline, one religion in sub- 
stance and in ceremony.' f And he denounced them 
as ' a sect unable to be suffered in any well govern- 
ed commonwealth.' | As if to ensnare their con- 
sciences or to deride their scruples, Archbishop 
Laud enjoined the introduction of sports on Sunday, 
a day, which, he knew, they held consecrated solely 
to the solemn services of religion. For nonconfor- 
mity to these and other canonical injunctions of a 
like nature, four hundred clergymen were ejected, 
suspended, or silenced in one single year of this reign.§ 
With an ill-omened perseverance in the same bigoted 
system, Charles the Second, soon after his restora- 

* 6 Hume's Hist. 163; 7 Hume's Hist. 41, 516. 

t Prince's Annals, 105. J Ibid. 107. § Ibid. 111. 



38 

tiQn, compelled two thousand clergymen in a single 
day to relinquish their cures, presenting to a licen- 
tious court the noble spectacle of men, who resigned 
all earthly preferments to their religious tenets.* 
Yet Mr Hume, in his eager apologies for royalty, 
could survey such scenes with philosophical indiffer- 
ence, and intimate a doubt, whether they deserved 
the appellation of persecution, because the victims 
were Puritans. f 

After all, it is not in the power of the scoffer, or 
the skeptic ; of the parasite, who fawns on courts, or 
the proselyte, who doats on the infallibility of his own 
sect, to obscure the real dignity of the character of 
the Puritans. We may lament their errors ; we may 
regret their prejudices ; we may pity their infirmi- 
ties ; we may smile at the stress laid by them on 
petty observances, and trifling forms. We may be- 
lieve, that their piety was mixed up with too much 
gloom and severity ; that it was sometimes darkened 
by superstition, and sometimes degraded by fanati- 
cism ; that it shut out too much the innocent pleas- 
ures of life, and enforced too strictly a discipline, 
irksome, cheerless, and oppressive ; that it was 
sometimes over rigid, when it might have been in- 
dulgent ; stern, when it might have been affectionate ; 
pertinacious, when concession would have been just, 
as well as graceful ; and flashing with fiery zeal, 
when charity demanded moderation, and ensured 
peace. All this, and much more, may be admitted, 
for they were but men, frail, fallible men, and yet 

* 6 Hume's Hist. 164. f 7 Hume's Hist. 384. 



39 

leave behind solid claims upon the reverence and 
admiration of mankind. Of them it may be said 
with as much truth, as of any men, that have ever 
lived, that they acted up to their principles, and 
followed them out with an unfaltering firmness. 
They displayed at all times a downright honesty of 
heart and purpose. In simplicity of life, in godly 
sincerity, in temperance, in humility, and in patience 
as well as in zeal, they seemed to belong to the 
apostolical age. Their wisdom, while it looked on 
this world, reached far beyond it in its aim and ob- 
jects. They valued earthly pursuits no farther than 
they were consistent with religion. Amidst the 
temptations of human grandeur they stood unmoved, 
unshaken, unseduced. Their scruples of conscience, 
if they sometimes betrayed them into difficulty, never 
betrayed them into voluntary sin. They possessed 
a moral courage, which looked present dangers in 
the face, as though they were distant or doubtful, 
seeking no escape, and indulging no terror. When 
in defence of their faith, of what they deemed pure 
and undefiled religion, we see them resign their 
property, their preferments, their friends, and their 
homes ; when we see them submitting to banishment, 
and ignominy, and even to death ; when we see 
them in foreign lands, on inhospitable shores, in the 
midst of sickness and famine, in desolation and dis- 
aster, still true to themselves, still confident in God's 
providence, still submissive to his chastisements, still 
thankful for his blessings, still ready to exclaim in 
the language of Scripture — t We are troubled on 
every side, yet not distressed ; we are perplexed, 



40 

btit not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; 
cast down, but not destroyed;' when we see such 
things, where is the man, whose soul does not melt 
within him at the sight ? Where shall examples be 
sought or found more full to point out what Christi- 
anity is, and what it ought to accomplish 1 

What better origin could we desire, than from men 
of characters like these ? Men, to whom conscience 
was every thing, and worldly prosperity nothing. 
Men, whose thoughts belonged to eternity rather 
than to time. Men, who in the near prospect of 
their sacrifices, could say, as our forefathers did say, 
' When we are in our graves, it will be all one, 
whether we have lived in plenty or in penury ; 
whether we have died in a bed of down, or locks of 
straw. Only this is the advantage of the mean con- 
dition, THAT IT IS A MORE FREEDOM TO DIE. And 

the less comfort any have in the things of this world, 
the more liberty they have to lay up treasure in 
heaven.'* Men, who in answer to the objection, 
urged by the anxiety of friendship, that they might 
perish by the way, or by hunger or the sword, could 
answer, as our forefathers did, ' We may trust God's 
providence for these things. Either he will keep 
these evils from us ; or will dispose them for our 
good, and enable us to bear them.' f Men, who in 
still later days, in their appeal for protection to the 
throne, could say with pathetic truth and simplicity, 
as our forefathers did, ' that we might enjoy divine 
worship without human mixtures, without offence to 

* 3 Hutch. Collect, p. 29. t IMd- 29, 30. 



41 

God, man, our own consciences, with leave, but not 
without tears, we departed from our country, kindred, 
and fathers' houses into this Patmos ; in relation 
whereunto we do not say, our garments are become 
old by reason of the very long journey, but that our- 
selves, who came away in our strength, are, by reason 
of long absence, many of us become grey-headed, 
and some of us stooping for age.' * 

If these be not the sentiments of lofty virtue ; if 
they breathe not the genuine spirit of Christianity ; 
if they speak not high approaches towards moral 
perfection ; if they possess not an enduring sub- 
limity ; — then, indeed, have I ill read the human 
heart ; then, indeed, have I strangely mistaken the 
inspirations of religion. If men, like these, can be 
passed by with indifference, because they wore not 
the princely robes, or the sacred lawn, because they 
shone not in courts, or feasted in fashionable circles, 
then, indeed, is Christian glory a vain shadow, and 
human virtue a dream, about which we disquiet our- 
selves in vain. 

But it is not so — it is not so. There are those 
around me, whose hearts beat high, and whose lips 
grow eloquent, when the remembrance of such an- 
cestors comes over their thoughts ; when they read 
in their deeds not the empty forms, but the essence 
of holy living and holy dying. Time was, when the 
exploits of war, the heroes of many battles, the con- 
querors of millions, the men, who waded through 
slaughter to thrones, the kings, whose footsteps were 

* 3 Hutch. Collect. 328. 



42 

darkened with blood, and the sceptred oppressors 
of the earth, were alone deemed worthy themes for 
the poet and the orator, for the song of the minstrel, 
and the hosannas of the multitude. Time was, when 
feats of arms, and tournaments, and crusades, and 
the high array of chivalry, and the pride of royal 
banners waving for victory, engrossed all minds. 
Time was, when the ministers of the altar sat down 
by the side of the tyrant, and numbered his victims, 
and stimulated his persecutions, and screened the 
instruments of his crimes — and there was praise and 
glory and revelry for these things. Murder, and 
rapine, burning cities, and desolated plains, if so be 
they were at the bidding of royal or baronial feuds, 
led on by the courtier or the clan, were matters of 
public boast, the delight of courts, and the treasured 
pleasure of the fireside tales. But these times have 
passed away. Christianity has resumed her meek 
and holy reign. The Puritans have not lived in vain. 
The simple piety of the Pilgrims of New-England 
casts into shade this false glitter, which dazzled and 
betrayed men into the worship of their destroyers. 

It has been said in the wantonness of folly, or the 
presumptuousness of ignorance, that America was 
peopled much in the same way, as Botany Bay, with 
outcasts and convicts. So far as respects New- 
England, there could not be a more flagrant violation 
of the truth of history. The poor, the friendless, 
and the oppressed came indeed hither. But their 
sole crime was, that they loved God more than they 
feared man. They came, too, under the guidance of 
men elevated by their rank, their fortune, and their 



43 



learning in their own country. Some of them were 
ed to noble families, whose graceful honors have 
tended to our days. Many of them were gemry 
of the realm, and possessed public respect iiom their 
known virtues and opulence. Many were ^ d.s m- 
■mished for high attainments in literature and so 
en e and couH trace back their matriculations to 
Z Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Many 
of them were ripe for public honors at home if they 
had chosen to remain there Many of them were 
the friends and compeers of Cromwell, and Pym, 
S Hampden, and Milton, and other n—s men 
who in the midst of all the changes of party, and all 
lie "trnhed disparagements of royalty, £ e = 
to attract the reverence of mankind Need 11 name 
Winthrop, Dudley, Endicott, Humphrey, SaUonstall 
Johnson! Nowel, Bradstreet, and ^«f™\* 
among the clergy, Higginson, Skelton, Co*m, Eh* 
Davenport, Williams, Wilson, Norton, Rogers, and 
Hooker, to many of whom we may, w.th ■**£%£ 
enthusiasm of Mather, apply the praise of Sahnas us, 
< Vir nunquam satis laudatus, nee temere sine laude 

nommandus.' * _ • . muc -u 

But to us it would not be. matter of regiet, much 

lesfof reproach, if the case were far «J™^ 

we could count among our ancestors on y the hum 

ble, the poor, and the forlorn. Rank, «> "j 

. and learning did indeed add lustre to their acte, and 

im part a more striking dignity to their suffering by 

giring them a bolder relief. But it was the purity of 

p. 260. 



44 

tlteir principles, their integrity, and devout piety, 
which constituted the solid fabric of their fame. It 
was Christianity, which cast over their character its 
warm and glorious light, and gave it an everlasting 
freshness. It was their faith in God, which shed 
such beauty over their lives, and clothed this mortal, 
with the form of immortality. In comparison with 
these, the distinctions of this world, however high 
or various they may be, are but evanescent points, a 
drop to the ocean, an instant to eternity, a ray of 
light to the innumerous fires, which blaze on uncon- 
sumed in the skies. This is not the poor estimate 
of man, the being of a day ; it is the voice of that 
Revelation, which has spoken to our hopes and fears 
with an authority, which rebukes, while it convinces, 
our reason. 

Let us rejoice, then, at our origin with an honest 
joy. Let us exultingly hail this day as one of glo- 
rious memory. Let us proudly survey this land, the 
land of our fathers. It is our precious inheritance. 
It was watered by their tears ; it was subdued by 
their hands ; it was defended by their valor ; it was 
consecrated by their virtues. Where is the empire, 
which has been won with so much innocence? 
Where is the empire, which has been maintained 
with so much moderation ? 

I pass to other topics, where the task of vindica- 
tion or apology becomes a duty of the day ; a task, 
which, I trust, may be performed with due reverence 
to our forefathers, and with a still greater reverence 
for truth. 



45 

It has been said, that our forefathers were bigoted, 
intolerant, and persecuting ; that while they demand- 
ed religious freedom for themselves, they denied it 
to all others ; that in their eyes even error in cere- 
mony or mode of worship was equally reprehensible 
with error in doctrine ; and, if persisted in, deserved 
the temporal punishments denounced upon heresy. 
Mr Hume * has dwelt with no small complacency 
upon the fact, that the Puritans < maintained that they 
themselves were the only pure church ; that their 
principles and practices ought to be established by 
law ; and that no others ought to be tolerated.' 

I am not disposed to deny the truth of the charge, 
or to conceal, or to extenuate the facts. I stand not 
up here the apologist for persecution, whether it be 
by Catholic or Protestant, by Puritan or Prelate, by 
Congregationalist or Covenanter, by Church or State, 
by the Monarch or the People. Wherever, and by 
whomsoever, it is promulgated or supported, under 
whatever disguises, for whatever purposes, at all 
times, and under all circumstances, it is a gross viola- 
tion of the rights of conscience, and utterly incon- 
sistent with the spirit of Christianity. I care not, 
whether it goes to life, or property, or office, or 
reputation, or mere private comfort, it is equally an 
outrage upon religion and the unalienable rights of 
man. If there is any right, sacred beyond all others, 
because it imports everlasting consequences, it is 
the right to worship God according to the dictates 
of our own consciences. Whoever attempts to nar- 



* 6 Hume's Hist. 164. 



46 

ro*w it down in any degree, to limit it by the creed 
of any sect, to bound the exercise of private judg- 
ment, or free inquiry, by the standard of his own 
faith, be he priest or layman, ruler or subject, dis- 
honors so far the profession of Christianity, and 
wounds it in its vital virtues. The doctrine, on 
which such attempts are founded, goes to the de- 
struction of all free institutions of government. 
There is not a truth to be gathered from history 
more certain, or more momentous, than this, that 
civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious 
liberty without danger, and ultimately without de- 
struction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, 
it will, hrst or last, bring in, and establish political 
liberty. Wherever it is suppressed, the church es- 
tablishment will, first or last, become the engine of 
despotism, and overthrow, unless it be itself over- 
thrown, every vestige of political right. How it is 
possible to imagine, that a religion breathing the 
spirit of mercy and benevolence, teaching the for- 
giveness of injuries, the exercise of charity, and the 
return of good for evil; how it is possible, I say, 
for such a religion to be so perverted, as to breathe 
the .spirit of slaughter and persecution, of discord 
and vengeance for differences of opinion, is a most 
unaccountable and extraordinary moral phenomenon. 
Still more extraordinary, that it should be the doc- 
trine, not of base and wicked men merely, seeking 
to cover up their own misdeeds ; but of good men, 
seeking the way of salvation with uprightness of heart 
and purpose. It affords a melancholy proof of the 
infirmity of human judgment, and teaches a lesson 



47 

of humility, from which spiritual pride may learn 
meekness, and spiritual zeal a moderating wis- 
dom. 

Let us not, then, in examining the deeds of our 
fathers, shrink from our proper duty to ourselves. 
Let us not be untrue to the lights of our own days, 
to the religious privileges, which we enjoy, to those 
constitutions of government, which proclaim Chris- 
tian equality to all sects, and deny the power of 
persecution to all. Our fathers had not arrived at 
the great truth, that action, not opinio?!, is the proper 
object of human legislation ; that religious freedom 
is the birthright of man ; that governments have no 
authority to inflict punishment for conscientious dif- 
ferences of opinion; and that to worship God ac- 
cording to our own belief is not only our privilege, 
but is our duty, our absolute duty, from which no 
human tribunal can absolve us. We should be un- 
worthy of our fathers, if we should persist in error, 
when it is known to us. Their precept, like their 
example, speaking as it were from their sepulchres, 
is, to follow truth, not as they saw it, but as we see 
it, fearlessly and faithfully. 

Let us meet the charge against them of bigotry, 
intolerance, and persecution, and gather from it in- 
struction and admonition for our own conduct. 
Were our forefathers singular in this respect ? Does 
the reproach, if reproach it be, that men do not live 
up to truths, which they do not comprehend, rest 
upon them alone? So far from this being true, 
there was not at that time in all Christendom a 
single spot, however remote, in which the freedom 



48 

of religious opinion was supported by prince or 
people. Throughout all Europe, if we except Hol- 
land, the practice of burning heretics still prevailed, 
not only in Catholic but in Protestant countries. 
And even in Holland, banishment was not an uncom- 
mon punishment for those, who obstinately persisted 
in heresies of doctrine.* What is it, then, that is 
required of our forefathers 1 That they should have 
possessed a wisdom and liberality far superior to their 
own age ; — that they should have acted upon truths 
as clear and settled, of which faint glimmerings only, 
or at least a brief and dubious twilight, had then 
shot up in unsteady streams to direct their course ; — 
that learned as they were, and wide as were their 
researches, and painful as was their diligence, they 
should have outstripped all others in the race, and 
surmounted the prejudices and prescriptions of 
twelve centuries. It would be dealing out a hard 
measure of justice to require perfect conformity un- 
der all circumstances to our own sense of duty. 
It would be dealing out still harder measure to 
press upon one poor, persecuted sect the sins of all 
Christendom ; to make them alone responsible for 
opinions, which had become sacred by their antiqui- 
ty, as well as their supposed coincidence with Scrip- 
ture. Uniformity of faith and intolerance of error 
had been so long the favorite dogmas of all schools 
of theology and government, that they had ceased 
to be examined. They were deemed texts for the 
preacher, and not inquiries for the critic. 

* C Hume's Hist. 57, 163 ; 7 Hume's Hist. 20, 41, 515. 



49 

I am aware, that in the writings of some of the 
early reformers, there may be found here and there 
passages, which recognise the principles of religious 
liberty. But we must remember, that they were 
uttered in the heat of controversy, to beat down the 
authority of the Romish church ; and so little were 
they sustained by public opinion, that they were 
lamentably forgotten in the first moments of Protes- 
tant victory. They were mere outworks in the sys- 
tem of theological opinions, which might form a 
defence against Catholic attacks ; and were treated 
with contempt or indifference, when heresies sprung 
up in the bosom of the new faith. My Lord Bacon, 
in his discourse upon the unity of religion, written 
with a moderation becoming his great mind, and with 
a spirit of indulgence far beyond the age, has never- 
theless contended strenuously for the unity of faith, 
and declared, that ' heresies and schisms are of all 
others the greatest scandals.' At the same time he 
boldly warns us not * to propagate religion by wars, 
or by sanguinary persecutions to force conscien- 
ces.' * At the distance of a century, the enlightened 
author of the ' Spirit of Laws ' avowed the doctrine, 
that it is sound policy, when the state is already 
satisfied with the established religion, not to suffer 
the establishment of another. And while he declares 
that penal laws, in respect to religion, ought to be 
avoided, he paradoxically maintains the doctrine, as 
a fundamental principle, that when the state is at 
liberty to receive or reject a new religion, it ought 



2 Bacon's Works, 259. 

7 



50 



to be rejected ; when it is received, it ought to be 
tolerated.* So slowly does truth make its way even 
among the most gifted minds, in opposition to pre- 
conceived opinions and prejudices. 

Nay, we need not go back to other times for 
illustrative examples. Is it even now true, that the 
doctrine of religious liberty is received with entire 
approbation in Christendom ? Where it is received 
with most favor, is it not recognised more as mat- 
ter of toleration and policy, than of right ? suffered 
rather than supported 1 connived at from fear, rather 
than vindicated upon principle ? Even in England, 
free and enlightened as she is, how slow and reluc- 
tant has been the progress towards a generous tole- 
ration. It is scarcely twelve years since it ceased 
to be a crime punishable with fine and imprisonment, 
to deny the doctrine of the Trinity. The universi- 
ties of Oxford and Cambridge are still by their stat- 
utes closed against the admission of Dissenters from 
the established church. For more than a century 
and a half, Protestant Dissenters of every descrip- 
tion were excluded by law from the possession of 
offices of trust or profit in the kingdom. The repeal 
of the odious corporation and test acts, by which 
this exclusion was guarded, was, after much resist- 
ance, accomplished only at the last session of Par- 
liament; and the celebrations of this event, of this 
emancipation from religious thraldom of one third of 
her whole population, are just reaching our ears from 
the other side of the Atlantic. The Catholic yet 

* Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, book 25, ch. 10, 12. 



51 

groans under the weight of disabilities imposed upon 
him by the unrelenting arm of power, and sickens at 
the annual visitation of that hope of relief, which 
mocks him at every approach, and recedes at the 
very moment, when it seems within his grasp. Even 
in our own country, can we lay our hands upon our 
hearts, and say with sincerity, that this universal 
freedom of religion is watched by none with jealousy 
and discontent? that there are none, who would 
employ the civil arm to suppress heresy, or to crush 
the weaker sects ? 

With what justice, then, shall we require from the 
Puritans of James's reign, lessons of Christian liber- 
ality, which, even in the nineteenth centuty, are re- 
jected by statesmen and patriots, by laity and clergy, 
in regions adorned with all the refinements of letters, 
and the lights of science 1 If they had continued in 
the mother country, it is more than probable, that 
persecution would have taught them, what reason 
and revelation had failed to teach them. They 
would have reached the point, at which the Inde- 
pendents arrived in the next reign, whose true glory 
it is, that ' of all Christian sects, this was the firs; 
which, during its prosperity as well as its adversity, 
always adopted the principle of toleration.' * 

But our forefathers acted far otherwise. The 
truth of history compels us to admit, that from the 
first settlement down to the charter of William and 
Mary in 1692, in proportion as they gathered inter- 
nal power, they were less and less disposed to share 



* 7 Hume's Hist. 20. 



52 



it, with any other Christian sect. That charter con- 
tained an express provision, that there should be 
1 a liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of 
God, to all Christians, except Papists.' Objection- 
able as this clause would have been under other 
circumstances, the recent attempts of James the 
Second, to introduce Popery ; and the dread which 
they entertained of being themselves the subjects of 
political, as well as religious persecution, reconciled 
them to it, and they hailed it almost as another mag- 
na charta of liberty.* So true it is, that accident 
or interest frequently forces men to the adoption of 
correct principles, when a sense of justice has totally 
failed to effect it. In the intermediate period, the 
Quakers and Anabaptists, and in short all other Dis- 
senters from their creed, had been unrelentingly per- 
secuted by fine, imprisonment, banishment, and 
sometimes even by death itself. Episcopalians, too, 
fell under their special displeasure ; and notwith- 
standing every effort of the Crown, by threats and 
remonstrance, they studiously excluded them from 
every office, and even from the right of suffrage. 
No person but a freeman was permitted to vote in 
any public affairs, or to hold any office ; and no 
person could become a freeman but by being a 
member of their own church, and recommended by 
their own clergy. f In truth the clergy possessed a 
power and influence in the state, as great as ever 
was exercised under any church establishment 
whatsoever. There was not, until after the repeal 
of the first charter in 1 676, a single Episcopal soci- 

* 1 Hutch. Hist. 75, and note. t 3 Hutch. Collect. 478, 484, 520, note. 



53 

ety in the whole colony ; * and even the celebration 
of Christmas was punished as a public offence, f In 
this exclusive policy our ancestors obstinately per- 
severed, against every remonstrance at home and 
abroad. When Sir Richard Saltonstall wrote to them 
his admirable letter, which pleads with such a catholic 
enthusiasm for toleration, the harsh and brief reply 
was, * God forbid our love for the truth should be 
grown so cold, that we should tolerate errors.' J And 
Cotton himself, 'whose praise is in all our churches,' 
the man, who could with a noble independence 
address himself to the bishop of Lincoln, in language 
like this ; * However much I do highly prize, and 
much prefer other men's judgment, and learning, 
and wisdom, and piety ; yet in things pertaining to 
God, and his worship, still I must (as I ought) live 
by my own faith, not theirs ; ' such a man, I say, could 
meanly stoop in the defence of persecution to ar- 
guments not unworthy of the worst ages of bigotry. § 
They went farther, imitating in this respect the 
famous act of uniformity of Elizabeth, and com- 
pelled an attendance upon their own mode of wor- 
ship under a penalty. Yes, the very men did this, 
who thought paying one shilling for not coming to 
prayers in England, was an unsupportable tyranny. || 
Yes, the very men who asked from Charles the 
Second, after his restoration, liberty of conscience 
and worship for themselves, were deaf, and dumb, 

* 3 Hutch. Hist. 430, 431. 

t 3 Hutch. Collect. 419, 482 ; Colony and Province Laws, edit. 1814, p. 119, 
ch. 50. 

X 3 Hutch. Collect. 401, 402. §3 Hutch. Collect. 403. 

|| 3 Hutch. Collect. 418, 419, 422 ; 1 Hutch. Hist. 75. 



54 

and blind, when it was demanded by his commis- 
sioners for Episcopalians and others. They silently 
evaded the claim, or resolutely refused it, as the 
temper of the times enabled them to act.* 

The very efforts made in the colony to establish 
this uniformity of faith, afford striking proofs of the 
utter hopelessness, as well as injustice of such at- 
tempts. Within ten years after their first landing, 
the whole colony was thrown into confusion by 
religious dissensions, by controversies about | faith 
and about forms of church government ; about the 
covenant of grace, and the covenant of works ; about 
liberty of conscience, and exclusiveness of worship ; 
about doctrines so mysterious and subtle, as seem 
past all human comprehension, and customs so tri- 
fling and vain, as seem beyond the reach of eccle- 
siastical censure. Who could imagine, that the rev- 
eries of Mrs Hutchinson, and the question, whether 
ladies should wear veils, and the legality of bearing 
the cross in a military standard, should have shaken 
the colony to its foundations ? So thickly sown 
were the seeds of spiritual discord, that more than 
four-score opinions were pronounced heresies by an 
ecclesiastical Synod convened in 1637. Yet were 
the difficulties far from being removed, although fines 
and imprisonment and banishment followed in the 
train of the excommunications of the church. The 
struggle for toleration was still maintained ; the dis- 



*3 Hutch. Collect. 188,191, 192, 193, 194, 418, 419, 422; 8 Hist. Collect, 
(second series) p. 76, 78 ; 1 Hutch. Hist. Appendix, 537 ; 3 Hutch. Collect. 
478, 482, 484, 519, 520. 

t 1 Hutch. Hist. 37, 55, 67, 73, 75, 430. 



55 

content with the laws, which confined political privi- 
leges to church members, constantly increased ; and 
diversities of faith at last grew up, so numerous and 
so formidable, that persecution became less frequent 
because it was less safe. The single fact, that under 
this exclusive system, not more than one sixth of 
the qualified inhabitants were freemen in 1676, 
affords an ample commentary upon its injustice and 
folly. Five sixths of the colony were disfranchised 
by the influence of the ecclesiastical power.* 

The fundamental error of our ancestors, an error 
which began with the very settlement of the colony, 
was a doctrine, which has since been happily ex- 
ploded, I mean the necessity of a union between 
church and state. To this they clung, as the ark of 
their safety. They thought it the only sure way of 
founding a Christian commonwealth. They main- 
tained, that ' church government and civil govern- 
ment may very well stand together, it being the duty 
of the magistrate to take care of matters of religion, 
and to improve his civil authority for observing the 
duties commanded by it.' f They not only tolerated 
the civil power in the suppression of heresy, but they 
demanded and enjoined it. They preached it in the 
pulpit and the synod. It was in their closet prayers, 
and in their public legislation. The arm of the civil 
government was constantly employed in support 
of the denunciations of the church ; and without its 
forms, the Inquisition existed in substance, with a 
full share of its terrors and its violence. There was, 

* 3 Hutch. Collect. 434. 1 1 Hutch. Hist. 434. 



56 

intleed, far more caution in shedding human blood ; 
but there was scarcely less indulgence for human 
error. For such proceedings there was not the 
poor apology, which has been sometimes suggested, 
that every religion, which is persecuted, becomes 
itself persecuting, because it attacks the religion 
which persecuted it, not as a religion, but as a tyran- 
ny* Our ancestors could not frame such an apol- 
ogy for themselves ; for no ecclesiastical tyranny 
attempted to usurp authority over them within the 
colony. It had a deeper origin, in that wretched 
doctrine of the union of church and state, by which 
Christianity has been made the minister of almost every 
wrong in the catalogue of crimes. It has been said 
with as much truth as force, by one of the most elo- 
quent of modern divines, ' that the boasted alliance 
between church and state, on which so many enco- 
miums have been lavished, seems to have been but 
little more than a compact between the priest and 
the magistrate to betray the liberties of mankind, 
both civil and religious.' f 

To the honor of New-England be it said, that if 
here persecution obtained an early triumph, here 
also for the first time since the Reformation was 
simultaneously proclaimed the doctrine of liberty of 
conscience, — a doctrine, which, I trust, will, by the 
blessing of God, be maintained by us and our pos- 
terity at all hazards, and against all encroachments. 
Here, on this very spot, in Naumkeag, in this ' bosom 



* Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, book 25, ch. ft. 
t Robert Hall. Pamphlet published in 1791. 



57 



of consolation,' * it was proclaimed by Roger Williams 
in 1635; and for this among other grave offences, 
he was sentenced to banishment. He fled to Rhode- 
Island ; and there in the code of laws for the colony 
planted by his energy and sagacity, we read for the 
first time, since Christianity ascended the throne of 
the Caesars, the declaration, that 'conscience should 
be free, and men should not be punished for wor- 
shipping God in the way they were persuaded he 
required,'— a declaration, which, to the honor of 
Rhode-Island, she has never departed from— a 
declaration, which puts to shame many a realm of 
wider domains and loftier pretensions. It still 
shines among her laws with an argument in its sup- 
port in the shape of a preamble, which has rarely 
been surpassed in power of thought or felicity of 
expression.! Massachusetts may blush, that the 
Catholic colony of Lord Baltimore, and the Quaker, 
the blameless Quaker colony of Penn, were originally 
founded on the same generous principles of Christian 
right, long before she felt or acknowledged them. J 
°While, D then, we joyfully celebrate this anniver- 
sary, let 'us remember, that our forefathers had their 
faults, as well as virtues ; that their example is not 
always a safe pattern for our imitation ; but some- 



* In the < Planter's Plea,' published in London in 1630, the writer says that 
Nahum Keike is perfect Hebrew, and by interpretation means < The bosom of 

consolation.' . , 

t It is almost in totidem verbis with the act of Virginia of 1785, which has been 
attributed to Mr. Madison. To which state the merit of the original draft be- 
longs, I am unable to say, as I have not the means of tracing it in Rhode-Island 
acts' earlier than in the Digest of 1793. 

1 1 Pitkin's Hist. 56, 67; Chalmers, p. 218; 2 Proud's Hist. Append. 

8 



58 

times a beacon of solemn warning. Let us do, not 
what they did, but what with our lights and advan- 
tages they would have done, must have done, from 
the love of country, and the love of truth. Is there 
any one, who would now for a moment justify the 
exclusion of every person from political rights and 
privileges, who is not a Congregationalist of the 
straitest sect in doctrine and discipline ? Is there 
any one, who would exclude the Episcopalian, the 
Baptist, the Methodist, the Quaker, or the Univer- 
salist, not merely from power and Christian fellow- 
ship, but from breathing the same air, and enjoying 
the same sunshine, and reaping the same harvest, 
because he walks not in the same faith, and kneels 
not at the same altar, with himself? Is there any 
one, who would bring back the by-gone penalties, 
and goad on tender consciences to hypocrisy or self- 
destruction ? Is there any one, that would light the 
faggot to burn the innocent? that would stain the 
temples of God with the blood of martyrdom ? that 
would cut off all the charities of human life, and in 
a religious warfare, arm the father against the son, 
the mother against the daughter, the wife against the 
husband ? that would bind all posterity in the fet- 
ters of his own creed, and shipwreck their con- 
sciences ? If any such there be, whatever badge 
they may wear, they are enemies to us and our 
institutions. They would sap the foundations of 
our civil as well as religious liberties. They would 
betray us into worse than Egyptian bondage. Of 
the doctrines of such men, if any such there be, I 
would say with the earnestness of the apostolical 



59 

exhortation, * Touch not, taste not, handle not.' If 
ever there could be a case, in which intolerance 
would rise almost into the dignity of a virtue, it would 
be, when its object was to put down intolerance. 
No — let us cling with a holy zeal to the Bible, and 
the Bible only, as the religion of Protestants. Let 
us proclaim with Milton, that ' neither traditions, nor 
councils, nor canons of any visible church, much 
less edicts of any civil magistrate, or civil session, 
but the Scripture only, can be the final judge or rule 
in matters of religion, and that only in the conscience 
of ever y Christian to himself.'' Let us inscribe on the 
walls of our dwellinghouses, in our temples, in our 
halls of legislation, in our courts of justice, the ad- 
mirable declaration of Queen Mary (the consort of 
William the Third) , than which a nobler precept of 
wisdom never fell from uninspired lips — ' It is not in 
the power of men to believe what they please ; and 
therefore, they should not be forced in matters of 
religion contrary to their persuasions and their con- 
sciences.' * 

I pass with unmixed pleasure to other and more 
grateful topics, where approbation need not be slow, 
or praise parsimonious. If, in laying the foundations 
of this Christian commonwealth, our forefathers were 
governed in respect to religion by a spirit unworthy 
of Protestantism, it was far otherwise in respect to 
their civil institutions. Here, a wise forecast and 
sound policy directed all their operations ; so wise 
and so sound, that the lapse of two hundred years 

* 9 Hist. Collect. 251. 



60 

has left unchanged the body of their legislation, and 
in a general sense added little to their securities 
for public or private rights. There is no reason to 
suppose, that they were opposed to monarchy as a 
suitable form of government for the mother country, 
or that opposition to the civil establishments mingled 
in the slightest degree with the motives of their emi- 
gration.* There is just as little reason to suppose, 
that they desired or would have acquiesced in the 
establishment of a colonial monarchy or aristocracy. 
On the contrary we know, that they refused to con- 
fer the magistracy for life ; and that they repelled 
every notion of an hereditary nobilit}^ in their cele- 
brated answer to the propositions of Lord Say and 
Seale.f This attachment to the form of government 
of the mother country was not only sincere, but 
continued down to the Revolution. Their descend- 
ants took many opportunities to evince it ; and some 
of the most powerful appeals made by the patriots 
of the Revolution to the British Crown are filled with 
eloquent professions of loyalty. The formation of a 
Republic was the necessary result of the final sepa- 
ration from England. The controversy was then 
narrowed down to the consideration of what form of 
government they might properly adopt. All their 
habits, principles, and institutions prohibited the ex- 
istence of a real or titular peerage. They had no 
materials for a king. They were, as they had been 
from the beginning, essentially republicans. They 
followed the lead of their existing institutions ; and 

* S Hutch. Collect. 326. f 1 Hutch. Hist. 490, 493, 494. 



61 

the most striking change introduced by them was 
the choice of a governor by themselves, as a substi- 
tute for the like choice by the Crown. 

Their connexion with and dependence upon the 
mother country grew up from their national allegi- 
ance, and was confirmed by the sense of their own 
weakness and the desire of protection. In return 
for this protection they were ready to admit a sove- 
reign right in Parliament to regulate to some, though 
an undefined extent, their foreign intercourse, and 
in the Crown to supervise their colonial legislation. 
But they never did admit the right of Parliament or 
the Crown to legislate generally for them, or to in- 
terfere with their domestic polity. On the contrary, 
from the first they resisted it, as an encroachment 
upon their liberties. This was more emphatically true 
of Massachusetts, than of any other of the Colonies. 
The commissioners of Charles the Second in 1665 
reported, that ' she was the last and hardliest per- 
suaded to use his majesty's name in the forms of 
justice;' — that her inhabitants * proclaimed by sound 
of trumpet, that the General Court was the supremest 
judicatory in all that province;' 'that the commis- 
sioners pretending to hear appeals was a breach of 
their privileges ;' 'and that they should not permit 
it.'* In short, the commissioners well described 
' their way of government, as commonwealth like.' f 
Even in relation to foreign commerce their strong 
sense of independence was illustrated by the com- 
plaint, that ' no notice was taken of the act of navi- 

* 3 Hutch. Collect. 417, 418. t Id- P- 422. 



62 

gation, plantation, or any other laws made in Eng- 
land for the regulation of trade ; all nations having 
free liberty to come into their ports and vend their 
commodities without any restraint.' * These acts of 
navigation and trade were never recognised as in 
force in the colony, until their own legislature re- 
quired their observance.! So strenuous were our 
ancestors even at this early period in maintaining 
the doctrine, that Parliament could not bind them, 
because they were not represented there. So jealous 
were they to guard against every usurpation of the 
Crown. He, indeed, must have read our annals with 
a very careless eye, who does not perceive at every 
turn, a constant struggle for substantial independ- 
ence. 

The basis of their institutions was from the first 
settlement republican. The people were the ad- 
mitted source of all power. They chose the magis- 
trates and executive. They established a represen- 
tative government; they created a colonial legisla- 
ture, whose power to enact laws was, until the 
overthrow of the first charter, deemed for most 
purposes absolute and supreme. Their earliest 
legislation recognised the great rights secured by 
the Magna Charta of England ; the trial by jury ; 
the free administration of justice ; the equality of 
freemen ; the abolition of all slavish and feudal ten- 
ures ; and above all the distribution of intestate 
estates among all the descendants of the deceased. 



* Randolph's Letter in 1676; 3 Hutch. Collect. 496. 
t 1 Hutch. Hist. 322 ; 3 Hutch. Collect. 521. 



63 

This was indeed a signal triumph over the prejudices 
in favor of primogeniture. It constituted a funda- 
mental principle in their policy ; and by its silent 
but irresistible influence, prevented the undue accu- 
mulation of estates in a few hands, so that the intro- 
duction of a colonial nobility became absolutely 
impracticable. Henceforth the partible nature of 
estates was so fixed in public opinion, that it broke 
down every attempt to perpetuate entails ; and left 
the mass of our landed interests, as we now find 
them, in the possession of the yeomanry in fee sim- 
ple. While this great law of descents exists, it will 
for ever prevent the establishment of any arbitrary 
power. The government, that once admits it into 
its code, may remain in form a monarchy, or an 
aristocracy ; but it will follow the impulses of public 
opinion, and find its surest protection in the advance- 
ment of popular principles. 

Thus broad, thus elevated, was the early legisla- 
tion of our forefathers. If we except from it that 
portion, which was tinged by the bigotry and super- 
stition of the times, we shall find it singular for its 
wisdom, humanity, and public spirit ; and admirably 
adapted to the wants of a free, simple, and intelligent 
people. 

Among the most striking acts of their legislation are 
those, which respect the cause of learning and edu- 
cation. Within ten short years after their first settle- 
ment they founded the University at Cambridge, and 
endowed it with the sum of four hundred pounds, a 
sum, which, considering their means and their wants, 
was a most generous benefaction. Perhaps no Ian- 



64 

guage could more significantly express the dignity of 
their design, than their own words. ' After God had 
carried us safe to New-England,' say they, ' and we 
had builded our houses, provided necessaries for 
our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's 
worship, and settled the civil government ; one of 
the next things we longed for, and looked after, was 
to advance learning and perpetuate lit to posterity, 
dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the 
churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the 
dust' * They were not disappointed in their hopes. 
By the blessing of Providence this little College, 
planted by their hands, and nursed by their care, has 
flourished. Already she counts nearly six thousand 
in her matriculations. She still stands erect, in the 
midst of her offspring, clothed with her ancient 
glory, and matron dignity, and lovelier by her age. 
Our hearts still yearn towards her; our thoughts 
still kindle at her praise ; our prayers still rise for 
her prosperity. We may smile at the early charge 
made by the royal commissioners, that ' it may be 
feared this College may afford us many schismatics 
to the church.' f But we proudly proclaim their 
reluctant confession, that by her means there was 
* a scholar to their minister in every town or village ' 
of Massachusetts.^; 

But the truest glory of our forefathers is in that 
system of public instruction, which they instituted 
by law, and to which New-England owes more of 
its character, its distinction, and its prosperity, than 

* 1 Hist. Collect. 240. \ 3 Hutch. Collect. 421. \ Id. 413. 



65 

to all other causes. If this system be not altogether 
without example in the history of other nations (as 
I suspect in its structure and extent it is), it is, con- 
sidering the age and means of the projectors, an 
extraordinary instance of wise legislation, and wor- 
thy of the most profound statesmen of any times. 
At the distance of centuries it stands alone and 
unrivalled. Europe has not ventured as yet to copy 
its outlines ; nor could they be copied in a despotism 
without undermining its foundations. England her- 
self, where letters and learning have so long held 
the highest rank, is but just beginning to think se- 
riously of a system of national instruction ; and her 
statesmen are now gathering admiration at home for 
schemes of public education, far, very far short of 
what her own poor, feeble, neglected colony estab- 
lished at the starting point of its political existence. 
Yes — it was in this system of public instruction, that 
our fathers laid the foundation for the perpetuity of 
our institutions, and for that growth of sound morals, 
industry, and public spirit, which has never yet 
been wanting in New-England, and, we may fondly 
hope, will for ever remain her appropriate praise. 
Yes — in the year 1647 they ordered every township 
of fifty householders to maintain a public school at 
public expense ; and every township of one hundred 
householders to maintain in like manner a grammar 
school, to instruct youth and fit them for the University, 
1 to the end,' say they, in this memorable law, ' to the 
end, that learning may not be buried in the graves of 
our forefathers, in church and commonwealth.' And 
this was done by them, when they had just made 
9 



66 

thteir first lodgment in the wilderness ; when they 
had scarcely found leisure to build, I do not say, fair 
dwellings, but humble cottages for their own shelter 
and safety. When they were poor and unprotected, 
persecuted and in peril — they could then look forward 
with a noble disregard of present enjoyments, and 
forgetting themselves, provide the bread of life for 
their posterity. This system has never been broken 
in upon ; it still stands in its substance on the pages 
of our statute book, an enduring record of wisdom 
and patriotism. Under its blessed influence our youth 
have grown up. They have received early instruc- 
tion in their rights and liberties, and (as the law 
itself requires) ' not only in sound literature, but in 
sound doctrine.' It is here, that industry has learn- 
ed the value of its own labors ; that genius has 
triumphed over the discouragements of poverty ; 
that skill has given polish as well as strength to 
talent ; that a lofty spirit of independence has been 
nourished and sustained ; that the first great lesson 
of human improvement has been taught, that knowl- 
edge is power ; and the last great lesson of human 
experience felt, that without virtue there is neither 
happiness nor safety. 

I know not what more munificent donation any 
government can bestow, than by providing instruc- 
tion at the public expense, not as a scheme of charity, 
but of municipal policy. If a private person deserves 
the applause of all good men, who founds a single 
hospital or college, how much more are they entitled 
to the appellation of public benefactors, who by the 
side of every church in every village plant a school 



67 



of letters. Other monuments of the art and genius 
of man may perish ; but these from their very nature 
seem, as far as human foresight can go, absolutely 
immortal. The triumphal arches of other days have 
fallen ; the sculptured columns have crumbled into 
dust ; the temples of taste and religion have sunk 
into decay ; the pyramids themselves seem but 
mighty sepulchres hastening to the same oblivion, to 
which the dead they cover have long since passed. 
But here, every successive generation becomes a 
living memorial of our public schools, and a living 
example of their excellence. Never, never may 
this glorious institution be abandoned or betrayed 
by the weakness of its friends, or the power of its 
adversaries. It can scarcely be abandoned or be- 
trayed, while New-England remains free, and her 
representatives are true to their trust. It must for 
ever count in its defence a majority of all those, who 
ought to influence public affairs by their virtues or 
their talents ; for it must be, that here they first felt 
the divinity of knowledge stir within them. What 
consolation can be higher, what reflection prouder, 
than the thought, that in weal and in woe our chil- 
dren are under the public guardianship, and may 
here gather the fruits of that learning, which ripens 
for eternity. 

There is another topic connected with the settle- 
ment of this country, which may not be passed over 
upon this occasion. At the very threshold of the 
enterprise, a nice question, both in morals and public 
law, must have presented itself to the consideration 
of conscientious minds. How far was it lawful to 



68 

people this western world, and deprive the Indians 
from that exclusive sovereignty over the soil, which 
they had exercised for ages beyond the reach of 
human tradition ? Men of deep reflection, and es- 
pecially men who felt a serious religious accounta- 
bility for their conduct, could not be presumed to 
pass over such a subject without weighing it with 
scrupulous delicacy. It did not escape the attention 
of our forefathers. They met it, and discussed it 
with a manly freedom ; they sought neither to dis- 
guise their own opinions, nor to conceal the real 
difficulties of the inquiry. 

In ascending to the great principles, upon which 
all human society rests, it must be admitted, that 
there are some, which are of eternal obligation, and 
arise from our relations to each other, and our com- 
mon dependence upon our Creator. Among these 
are the duty to do justice, to love mercy, and to 
walk humbly before God. There are others again, 
which are merely founded in general convenience, 
and presuppose some regulations of society, or con- 
ventional law. The rights belonging to this latter 
class are coextensive only with the nations, which 
recognise them ; and in a general sense cannot be 
deemed obligatory upon the rest of the world. The 
plain reason is, that no portion of mankind has any 
authority delegated to it by the Creator to legislate 
for, or bind, all the rest. The very equality of original 
rights, which every argument presupposes, excludes 
the notion of any authority to control those rights, 
unless it is derived by grant or surrender, so as to 
bind others in conscience and abstract justice. 



69 

We are told in the Scriptures, that in the begin- 
ning God gave man dominion over the earth, and 
commanded him to replenish and subdue it ; and 
this has been justly said to be the true and solid 
foundation of man's dominion over it.* But this 
principle does not lead to the conclusion, that any 
particular person may acquire to himself a permanent 
and exclusive interest in the soil ; much less, that 
any single nation may appropriate to itself as much 
of the surface as it shall choose, and thus narrow 
down the common inheritance, and exclude all others 
from any participation in its products for the supply of 
their own wants. If any right can be deduced from 
this general grant of dominion to man, it is of a far 
more limited nature ; the right to occupy what we 
possess during the time of possession, the right of 
mere present enjoyment ; which seems to flow as 
much from the consideration, that no one can show 
a better right to displace us, as from the considera- 
tion, that it affords the only means of any enjoyment. 
But where shall we find, independently of maxims 
derived from society, the right of any nation to ex- 
clude others from cultivating the soil, which it does 
not itself choose to cultivate, but which may be in- 
dispensable to supply the necessities of others 1 
Where is the principle, which withdraws from the 
common inheritance, and gives to a few, what the 
bounty of God has provided for all ? The truth is 
(though it is a truth rarely brought into discus- 
sion among civilized nations), that exclusive sove- 

* 2 Bl. Com. 2. 



70 

reignty and ownership of the soil, is a derivative 
right, resting upon municipal regulations and the 
public law of society, and obtaining its whole valid- 
ity from the recognitions of the communities, which 
it binds, and the arm of power, which encircles and 
protects it. It is a right founded upon the soundest 
policy, and has conduced, more than almost any 
human achievement, to create the virtues which 
strengthen, and the refinements which grace civil- 
ized life. But if general consent should abolish it 
tomorrow, it would be difficult to say, that a return 
to the patriarchal or pastoral state of nations, and 
the community of property, would be any departure 
from natural right. 

When this continent was first discovered, it be- 
came an object of cupidity to the ambition of many 
of the nations of Europe. Each eagerly sought to 
appropriate it to itself. But it was obvious, that in the 
mutual struggle for power, contests of the most san- 
guinary nature would soon intervene, if some general 
principle were not adopted by the consent of all for 
the government of all. The most flexible and con- 
venient principle, which occurred, was, that the first 
discovery should confer upon the nation of the dis- 
coverer an exclusive right to the soil, for the pur- 
poses of sovereignty and settlement. This principle 
was accordingly adopted, and became a fundamental 
doctrine in the code of legal ethics, by which the 
European governments regulated their acquisitions. 
No European subject was permitted to interfere 
with it, and the possession acquired under it was 
deemed absolute and unquestionable. In respect to 



71 

desert places, the principle, as one of peace and 
equality of benefits, is not perhaps obnoxious to 
censure. But in respect to countries already inhab- 
ited, neither its general justice, nor its conformity 
to public law, entitles it to commendation. If, ab- 
stractedly considered, mere discovery could confer 
any title, the natives already possessed it by such 
prior discovery. If this were put aside, and mere 
possession could confer sovereignty, they had that 
possession, and w T ere entitled to the sovereignty. In 
short, it is clear, that upon the principles generally 
recognised by European nations, as between them- 
selves, the natives could not be rightfully displaced. 
And if they were not entitled to the benefit of those 
principles, they might still stand upon the eternal 
laws of natural justice, and maintain their right to 
share in the common inheritance. Such a conclu- 
sion could not escape the sagacity of the statesmen 
and princes of the old world ; but it was quite too 
refined to satisfy their ambition and lust of dominion. 
It was easy to found an argument for the expulsion 
of the natives upon their infidelity and barbarism, 
which allowed them to be treated as the enemies of 
God. It was still more plausible to hold out the 
prospect of converting them to the Christian faith, 
and thus to secure a new triumph to civilization and 
the cross. If their territory was invaded, and their 
governments were overthrown, if they were compel- 
led to yield to the superior genius and power of 
Europe, they would still receive an ample compen- 
sation in their admission into the bosom of European 
society with its privileges and improvements. Such 



72 

* 
were some of the suggestions, by which royal am- 
bition sought to disguise its real objects, and to re- 
concile to religion itself the spirit of conquest. It 
is but justice, however, to add, that there was no 
public avowal, that the natives possessed no right 
whatsoever. On the contrary it was conceded, that 
they possessed a present right of occupancy, tem- 
porary, indeed, and limited, which might be surren- 
dered to the discovering nation, and in the mean 
time was entitled to respect. 

Our forefathers did not attempt to justify their 
own emigration and settlement, upon the European 
doctrine of the right of discovery. Their patent 
from the Crown contained a grant of this right ; but 
they felt that there was a more general question behind. 
' What warrant have we to take that land, which is, 
and hath been of long time possessed by others, the 
sons of Adam 1 - Their answer is memorable for 
its clearness, strength, and bold assertion of princi- 
ples. That which is common to all (said they) is 
proper to none. This savage people ruleth over 
many lands without title or property. Why may not 
Christians have liberty to go and dwell amongst 
them in their waste lands ? God hath given to the 
sons of men a two-fold right to the earth. There is 
a natural right and a civil right. The first right was 
natural, when men held the earth in common. 
When afterwards they appropriated some parcels of 
ground, by enclosing and peculiar manurance, this 
in time got them a civil right. There is more than 
enough land for us and them. God hath consumed 
them with a miraculous plague, whereby the greater 



73 

part of the country is left void of inhabitants. Be- 
sides, we shall come in with the good leave of the 
natives.* Such arguments were certainly not un- 
worthy of men of scrupulous virtue. They were 
aided by higher considerations, by the desire to 
propagate Christianity among the Indians ; a desire, 
which is breathed forth in their confidential papers, 
in their domestic letters, in their private prayers, and 
in their public devotions. In this object they were 
not only sincere, but constant. So sincere and so 
constant, that one of the grave accusations against 
them has been, that in their religious zeal, they com- 
pelled the Indians, by penalties, to attend public 
worship, and allured them, by presents, to abandon 
their infidelity, f In truth, the propagation of Chris- 
tianity was a leading motive with many of the early 
promoters of the settlement ; and we need no better 
proof of it, than the establishment of an Indian school 
at Harvard College to teach them the rudiments of 
Christian faith. 

Whatever, then, may have been the case in other 
parts of the continent, it is a fact, and it should not 
be forgotten, that our forefathers never attempted to 
displace the nations by force, upon any pretence of 
European right. They occupied and cultivated 
what was obtained by grant, or was found vacant. 
They constantly respected the Indians in their set- 
tlements and claims of soil. They protected them 
from their enemies, when they sought refuge among 
them. They stimulated no wars for their extermi- 

* 3 Hutch. Collect. 30, 31 . f 3 Hutch. Collect. 28, 32, 420, -190. 

10 



74 

» 

nation. During the space of fifty years, but a single 

case of serious warfare occurred ; and though we 
cannot but lament the cruelties then perpetrated, 
there is no pretence, that they were the aggressors 
in the contest. Whatever complaints, therefore, may 
be justly urged by philosophy, or humanity, or reli- 
gion, in our day, respecting the wrongs and injuries 
of the Indians, they scarcely touch the Pilgrims of 
New-England. Their hands were not imbrued in 
innocent blood. Their hearts were not heavy with 
crimes and oppressions engendered by avarice. If 
they were not wholly without blame, they were not 
deep in guilt. They might mistake the time, or the 
mode of christianizing and civilizing the Indians ; 
but they did not seek pretences to extirpate them. 
Private hostilities and butcheries there might be ; 
but they were not encouraged or justified by the 
government. It is not, then, a just reproach, some- 
times cast on their memories, that their religion 
narrowed down its charities to Christians only ; and 
forgot, and despised, and oppressed these forlorn 
children of the forest. 

There is, indeed, in the fate of these unfortunate 
beings, much to awaken our sympathy, and much to 
disturb the sobriety of our judgment ; much which 
may be urged to excuse their own atrocities ; much 
in their characters, which betrays us into an invol- 
untary admiration. What can be more melancholy 
than their history ? By a law of their nature, they 
seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. Every 
where at the approach of the white man they fade 
away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like 



75 

that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are 
gone for ever. They pass mournfully by us, and they 
return no more. Two centuries ago, the smoke of 
their wigwams and the fires of their councils rose 
in every valley from Hudson's Bay to the farthest 
Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the 
lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance 
rung through the mountains and the glades. The 
thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled 
through the forests ; and the hunter's trace, and the 
dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their 
lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The 
young listened to the songs of other days. The 
mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the 
scene with warm hopes of the future. The aged sat 
down ; but they wept not. They should soon be at 
rest in fairer regions, where the Great Spirit dwelt, 
in a home prepared for the brave beyond the wes- 
tern skies. Braver men never lived ; truer men 
never drew the bow. They had courage, and forti- 
tude, and sagacity, and perseverance, beyond most of 
the human race. They shrunk from no dangers, and 
they feared no hardships. 

If they had the vices of savage life, they had the 
virtues also. They were true to their country, their 
friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, 
neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance 
was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were un- 
conquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stop- 
ped not on this side of the grave. But where are 
they ? Where are the villages, and warriors, and 
youth? The sachems and the tribes? The hunt- 



76 

» 

ers and their families 1 They have perished. They 

are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone 
done the mighty work. No, — nor famine, nor war. 
There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, 
which hath eaten into their heart-cores — a plague 
which the touch of the white man communicated — a 
poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. 
The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region, 
which they may now call their own. Already the 
last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for 
their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them 
leave their miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, 
the women, and the warriors, ' few and faint, yet 
fearless still.' The ashes are cold on their native 
hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their 
lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady 
step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror 
or despatch ; but they heed him not. They turn to 
take a last look of their deserted villages. They 
cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. 
They shed no tears ; they utter no cries ; they heave 
no groans. There is something in their hearts, 
which passes speech. There is something in their 
looks, not of vengeance or submission ; but of hard 
necessity, which stifles both ; which choaks all utter- 
ance ; which has no aim or method. It is courage 
absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. 
Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal 
stream. It shall never be repassed by them, — no, 
never. Yet there lies not between us and them, an 
impassable gulf. They know, and feel, that there 
is for them still one remove farther, not distant, nor 



77 

unseen. It is to the general burial-ground of their 
race. 

Reason as we may, it is impossible not to read in 
such a fate, much, that we know not how to inter- 
pret ; much of provocation to cruel deeds and deep 
resentments ; much of apology for wrong and per- 
fidy ; much of pity mingling with indignation ; much 
of doubt and misgiving as to„the past ; much of pain- 
ful recollections ; much of dark foreboding. 

Philosophy may tell us, that conquest in other 
cases has adopted the conquered into its own bosom ; 
and thus at no distant period given them the com- 
mon privileges of subjects ; — but that the red men 
are incapable of such an assimilation. By their very 
nature and character they can neither unite them- 
selves with civil institutions, nor with safety be al- 
lowed to remain as distinct communities. Policy 
may suggest, that their ferocious passions, their in- 
dependent spirit, and their wandering life disdain the 
restraints of society ; that they will submit to su- 
perior force only, while it chains them to the earth 
by its pressure. A wilderness is essential to their 
habits and pursuits. They can neither be tamed 
nor overawed. They subsist by war or hunting ; 
and the game of the forest is relinquished only for 
the nobler game of man. The question, therefore, 
is necessarily reduced to the consideration, whether 
the country itself shall be abandoned by civilized 
man, or maintained by his sword as the right of the 
strongest. 

It may be so ; perhaps, in the wisdom of Provi- 
dence, it must be so. I pretend not to comprehend, 



78 
» 

or solve, such weighty difficulties. But neither phi- 
losophy nor policy can shut out the feelings of 
nature. Humanity must continue to sigh at the con- 
stant sacrifices of this bold, but wasting race. And 
Religion, if she may not blush at the deed, must, as 
she sees the successive victims depart, cling to the 
altar with a drooping heart, and mourn over a des- 
tiny without hope and without example. 

Let our consolation be, that our forefathers did 
not precipitate the evil days. Their aim was peace ; 
their object was the propagation of Christianity. 

There is one other circumstance in the history of 
the Colony, which deserves attention, because it has 
afforded a theme for bitter sarcasm and harsh re- 
proach ; and as the principal scenes of the tragedy 
took place on this very spot, this seems a fit occasion 
to rescue the character of our forefathers from the 
wanton attacks of the scoffer and the satirist. I al- 
lude to the memorable trials for witchcraft in this 
town in 1692, which terminated in the death of many 
innocent persons, partly from blind credulity and 
partly from overwhelming fraud. The whole of these 
proceedings exhibit melancholy proofs of the effect 
of superstition in darkening the mind, and steeling 
the heart against the dictates of humanity. Indeed, 
nothing has ever been found more vindictive and 
cruel than fanaticism, acting under the influence of 
preternatural terror, and assuming to punish offences 
created by its own gloomy reveries. Under such 
circumstances it becomes itself the very demon, 
whose agency it seeks to destroy. It loses sight of 
all the common principles of reason and evidence. 



79 

It sees nothing around it but victims for sacrifice. 
It hears nothing but the voice of its own vengeance. 
It believes nothing but what is monstrous and in- 
credible. It conjures up every phantom of super- 
stition, and shapes it to the living form of" its own 
passions and frenzies. In short, insanity could hardly 
devise more refinements in barbarity, or profligacy 
execute them with more malignant coolness. In the 
wretched butcheries of these times (for so they in 
fact were), in which law and reason were equally 
set at defiance, we have shocking instances of un- 
natural conduct. We find parents accusing their 
children, children their parents, and wives their hus- 
bands, of a crime, which must bring them to the 
scaffold. We find innocent persons, misled by the 
hope of pardon, or wrought up to frenzy by the pre- 
tended sufferings of others, freely accusing them- 
selves of the same crime. We find gross perjury 
practised to procure condemnations, sometimes for 
self-protection, and sometimes from utter reckless- 
ness of consequences. We find even religion itself 
made an instrument of vengeance. We find minis- 
ters of the gospel and judges of the land stimulating 
the work of persecution, until at last in its progress 
its desolations reached their own fire-sides.* 

And yet, dark and sad as is this picture, it furnish- 
es no just reproach upon this ancient town, beyond 
what belongs to it in common with all New-England, 
and, indeed, with all Christendom. Thirty years 
before this period there had been executions for 

* 2 Hutch. Hist, 16 to 60, &c. 



80 

witchcraft in this and other colonies, in Charlestown, 
Boston, Springfield, and Hartford. It has been just- 
ly observed by an intelligent historian,* that the im- 
portance given to the New-England trials proceeded 
more from the general panic, than from the number 
executed, ' more having been put to death in a single 
county in England, in a short space of time, than 
have suffered in all New-England from the first set- 
tlement to the present time,' 

Our forefathers were sincere believers in the reality 
of witchcraft ; and the same opinion then prevailed 
throughout all Europe. The possibility, nay, the ac- 
tual existence of a commerce with evil spirits, has 
had in its support the belief of many enlightened 
nations of the world. Mr. Justice Blackstone has 
not scrupled to declare, that to deny it * is at once 
flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in va- 
rious passages both of the Old and New Testament.' f 
I meddle not with this matter of controversial divinity. 
But it is certain, that from the earliest times it has 
been punished as a crime in all Christian countries, 
and generally, as a mark of peculiar horror and de- 
testation, with death. Such was its punishment in 
England at the time of the emigration of our ances- 
tors ; and such it continued to be until the reign of 
George the Second. Surely, when we read of con- 
victions before so mild and enlightened a judge, as 
Sir Matthew Hale, it should excite no surprise, that 
our own judges were not superior to the delusion ; 
that they possessed not a wisdom beyond the law, 



* 2 Hutch. Hist 15, 1G. f 4 Bl. Com. 60 ; 3 Inst. 43. 



81 

nor a power to resist the general credulity. My 
Lord Coke, in the simplicity of his own belief, loads 
witches with the most opprobrious epithets, as ' hor- 
rible, devilish, and wicked offenders;'* and the 
Parliament of king James the First has enumerated, 
in studied detail, divers modes of conjuration and 
enchantment, upon which it has inflicted the punish- 
ment of death. f Lord Bacon has lent the credit of 
his own great name to preserve some of the wonders 
and ointments of witchcraft, with sundry wholesome 
restrictions upon our belief of their efficacy. J And 
we have high authority for saying, that ' it became a 
science, every where much studied and cultivated, 
to distinguish a true witch by proper trials and 
symptoms.' § 

We may lament, then, the errors of the times, 
which led to these persecutions. But surely our 
ancestors had no special reasons for shame in a be- 
lief, which had the universal sanction of their own 
and all former ages ; which counted in its train phi- 
losophers, as well as enthusiasts ; which was graced 
by the learning of prelates, as well as the counte- 
nance of kings ; which the law supported by its 
mandates, and the purest judges felt no compunc- 
tions in enforcing. Let Witch Hill remain for ever 
memorable by this sad catastrophe, not to perpetuate 
our dishonor, but as an affecting, enduring proof of 
human infirmity ; a proof, that perfect justice belongs 
to one Judgment-seat only, that which is linked to 
the Throne of God. 



* 3 Inst. 44. f Ibid. 44, 45. {2 Bacon's Works, 27, 45, 69. 

§ 7 Hume's Hist. 186. 

11 



82 

Time would fail me to go at large into the history 
of New-England, and my own strength, as well as 
your patience, is far spent. Yet it should not be 
concealed, that we have a proud consciousness of 
the spirit and principles of our fathers throughout 
every period of their colonial existence. At no time 
were they the advocates of passive obedience and 
non-resistance to rulers at home or abroad. At all 
times they insisted, that the right of taxation and 
the right of representation were inseparable in a 
free government ; and that on that account the power 
of taxation was vested exclusively in their own co- 
lonial legislature. At all times they connected them- 
selves, with a generous fidelity, to the fortunes of the 
mother country, and shared the common burthens, 
and bore the common hardships with cheerfulness. 
The sons of New-England were found in her ranks 
in battle, foremost in danger ; but, as is not unusual 
in colonial service, latest in the rewards of vic- 
tory. An ante-revolutionary historian of unquestion- 
able accuracy has said, that ' in the course of sixty 
years the Province of Massachusetts hath been at a 
greater expense, and hath lost more of its inhabitants, 
than all the other colonies upon the continent taken 
together.' In the Indian wars, in the successive 
attacks upon the French colonies, and in the capture 
of Quebec and the Canadas, they bore an honorable 
and important part. Even when their first charter 
was vacated, their resistance to the arbitrary measures 
of Sir Edmund Andros was but a prelude to the 
principles and practice of the Revolution. 



83 

Of the memorable events of a later period ; of the 
resistance to British oppression ; of the glorious war 
of Independence ; of the subsequent establishment 
of the national government, I need not speak. They 
are familiar to all of us ; but though repeated for the 
thousandth time, they still possess an animating fresh- 
ness. In the struggle for independence, in which 
all the colonies embarked in a common cause, and 
all exhibited examples of heroism and public spirit, 
in which all seemed to forget themselves and remem- 
ber only their country, it would be invidious to draw 
comparisons of relative merit, since the true glory 
of each is in the aggregate achievements of all. 
Throughout the contest, the citizens of various states 
fought side by side, and shared the common toils. 
Their sufferings and their fame were blended at 
every step, in the hour of peril, and in the hour of 
triumph. Let not those be separated in death, who 
in life were not divided. 

But I may say, that New-England was not behind 
the other states in zeal, in public sacrifices, in con- 
tributions of men and money, in firmness of resolve, 
or in promptitude of action. The blood of her chil- 
dren was freely poured not only on her own soil, 
but in every field, where armies met in hostile array. 
It flowed not on the land alone ; the ocean received 
it into its swelling bosom. Wherever the battle raged, 
they were found ; and many a gallant spirit breathed 
his last breath on the deck, with his thoughts still 
warm with the love of his native New-England. 
Let a single fact concerning Massachusetts suffice to 
establish no mean claim to respect. Upon the final 



84 

adjustment of the accounts of the revolutionary war, 
although her own soil had been but for a short period 
occupied by the enemy, she had expended eighteen 
millions of dollars, and the balance then due to her 
exceeded one million. One state only in the Union 
surpassed her in expenditures, and none in the bal- 
ance in her favor.* But this would give a very 
inadequate view of her real efforts. Her voluntary 
bounties upon enlistments, her town and county con- 
tributions, are almost incredible, when we consider 
the general poverty and distress. But I forbear. 
Much might be urged in her favor, much in favor of 
her New-England sisters, which has been sometimes 
remembered, only to be forgotten. Much might be 
said of the long array of statesmen and divines and 
lawyers and physicians, of the literature and science, 
which have adorned our annals. Let it pass — let it 
pass. Their works shall praise them. They cannot 
be concealed, whenever the deeds of our country 
are recited. The writer of the declaration of Inde- 
pendence is not ours ; but the author of the act it- 
self reposes among us. He, who was ' first in war, 
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his country- 
men,' sleeps in his native soil by the side of the beau- 
tiful Potomac. But the Colony of Roger Williams, of 
narrow territory, but of ample enterprise, may boast 
of one, second in excellence only to Washington. 

But while we review our past history, and recollect 
what we have been, and are, the duties of this day 
were but ill performed, if we stopped here ; if turning 

* 2 Pitkin's Hist, of United States, p. 53S. 



85 

from the past, and entering on the third century of our 
political existence, we gave no heed to the voice of 
experience, and dwelt not with thoughts of earnest, 
busy solicitude upon the future. What is to be the 
destiny of this Republic 1 In proposing this question, 
I drop all thought of New-England. She has bound 
herself to the fate of the Union. May she be true 
to it, now, and for ever ; true to it, because true to 
herself, true to her own principles, true to the cause 
of religion and liberty throughout the world. I speak 
then of our common country, of that blessed mother, 
that has nursed us in her lap, and led us up to man- 
hood. What is her destiny 1 Whither does the 
finger of fate point? Is the career, on which we 
have entered to be bright with ages of onward and 
upward glory ? Or is our doom already recorded in 
the past history of the earth, in the past lessons of 
the decline and fall of other republics ? If we are to 
flourish with a vigorous growth, it must be (I think) 
by cherishing principles, institutions, pursuits, and 
morals, such as planted, and have hitherto support- 
ed New-England. If we are to fall, may she still 
possess the melancholy consolation of the Trojan 
patriot ; 

' Sat patrice Priamoque datum ; si Pergama d extra 
Defend! possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.' 

I would not willingly cloud the pleasures of such 
a day, even with a transient shade. I would not, 
that a single care should flit across the polished 
brow of hope, if considerations of the highest mo- 
ment did not demand our thoughts, and give us 
counsel of our duties. Who, indeed, can look around 



86 

i 

him upon the attractions of this scene, upon the faces 

of the happy and the free, the smiles of youthful 
beauty, the graces of matron virtue, the strong intellect 
of manhood, and the dignity of age, and hail these as 
the accompaniments of peace and independence ; — 
who can look around him and not at the same time 
feel, that change is written on all the works of man ; 
that the breath of a tyrant, or the fury of a corrupt 
populace, may destroy in one hour, what centuries 
have slowly consolidated. It is the privilege of great 
minds, that to them ' coming events cast their shad- 
ows before.' We may not possess this privilege ; 
but it is true wisdom, not to blind ourselves to dan- 
gers, which are in full view ; and true prudence, to 
guard against those, of which experience has already 
admonished us. 

When we reflect on what has been, and is, how is 
it possible not to feel a profound sense of the re- 
sponsibleness of this Republic to all future ages. 
What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts. 
What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiam. What 
solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance, and 
moderate our confidence. 

The old world has already revealed to us in its 
unsealed books the beginning and end of all its own 
marvellous struggles in the cause of liberty. Greece, 
lovely Greece, ' the land of scholars and the nurse 
of arms,' where sister republics in fair processions 
chanted the praises of liberty and the gods ; where, 
and what is she? For two thousand years the op- 
pressor has bound her tc the earth. Her arts are 
no more. The last sad relics of her temples are but 



87 

the barracks of a ruthless soldiery ; the fragments of 
her columns and her palaces are in the dust, yet 
beautiful in ruin. She fell not, when the mighty 
were upon her. Her sons were united at Ther- 
mopylae and Marathon ; and the tide of her triumph 
rolled back upon the Hellespont. She was conquer- 
ed by her own factions. She fell by the hands of 
her own people. The Man of Macedonia did not 
the work of destruction. It was already done by 
her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions. 
Rome, republican Rome, whose eagles glanced in 
the rising and setting sun, where, and what is she ? 
The eternal city yet remains, proud even in her 
desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the 
majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of 
death. The malaria has but travelled in the paths 
worn by her destroyers. More than eighteen cen- 
turies have mourned over the loss of her empire. 
A mortal disease was upon her vitals before Caesar 
had crossed the Rubicon ; and Brutus did not restore 
her health by the deep probings of the senate cham- 
ber. The Goths and Vandals and Huns, the swarms 
of the North, completed only what was already 
begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The 
legions were bought and sold ; but the people offer- 
ed the tribute money. 

And where are the republics of modern times, 
which clustered round immortal Italy ? Venice and 
Genoa exist but in name. The Alps, indeed, look 
down upon the brave and peaceful Swiss in their 
native fastnesses ; but the guaranty of their freedom 
is in their weakness, and not in their strength. The 



88 

mountains are not easily crossed, and the vallies are 
not easily retained. When the invader comes, he 
moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his 
path. The peasantry sinks before him. The coun- 
try is too poor for plunder ; and too rough for valua- 
ble conquest. Nature presents her eternal barriers 
on every side to check the wantonness of ambition ; 
and Switzerland remains with her simple institutions, 
a military road to fairer climates, scarcely worth a 
permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy 
of her neighbours. 

We stand the latest, and, if we fail, probably the 
last experiment of self-government by the people. 
We have begun it under circumstances of the most 
auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. 
Our growth has never been checked by the oppres- 
sions of tyranny. Our constitutions have never been 
enfeebled by the vices or luxuries of the old world. 
Such as we are, we have been from the beginning ; 
simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-govern- 
ment and self-respect. The Atlantic rolls between 
us and any formidable foe. Within our own terri- 
tory, stretching through many degrees of latitude 
and longitude, we have the choice of many products, 
and many means of independence. The government 
is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Know- 
ledge reaches, or may reach, every home. What 
fairer prospect of success could be presented ? 
What means more adequate to accomplish the sub- 
lime end ? What more is necessary, than for the 
people to preserve what they themselves have cre- 
ated? 



89 

Already has the age caught the spirit of our insti- 
tutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and 
snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused 
itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the 
sunny plains of France, and the low lands of Hol- 
land. It has touched the philosophy of Germany 
and the North, and, moving onward to the South, 
has opened to Greece the lessons of her better 
days. 

Can it be, that America under such circumstances 
can betray herself? That she is to be added to the 
catalogue of republics, the inscription upon whose 
ruins is, * They were, but they are not.' Forbid it, 
my countrymen ; forbid it, Heaven. 

I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your 
ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this 
precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be ; 
resist every project of disunion, resist every en- 
croachment upon your liberties, resist every attempt 
to fetter your consciences, or smother your public 
schools, or extinguish your system of public instruc- 
tion. 

I call upon you, mothers, by that which never 
fails in woman, the love of your offspring; teach them, 
as they climb your knees, or learn on your bosoms, 
the blessings of liberty. Swear them at the altar, as 
with their baptismal vows, to be true to their coun- 
try, and never to forget or forsake her. 

I call upon you, young men, to remember whose 

sons you are ; whose inheritance you possess. Life 

can never be too short, which brings nothing but 

disgrace and oppression. Death never comes too 

12 



90 



soon, if necessary in defence of the liberties of your 
country. 

I call upon you, old men, for your counsels, and 
your prayers, and your benedictions. May not your 
grey hairs go down in sorrow to the grave with the 
recollection, that you have lived in vain. May not 
your last sun sink in the west upon a nation of 
slaves. 

No — I read in the destiny of my country far bet- 
ter hopes, far brighter visions. We, who are now 
assembled here, must soon be gathered to the con- 
gregation of other days. The time of our departure 
is at hand, to make way for our children upon the 
theatre of life. May God speed them and theirs. 
May he, who at the distance of another century 
shall stand here to celebrate this day, still look round 
upon a free, happy, and virtuous people. May he 
have reason to exult as we do. May he, with all the 
enthusiasm of truth as well as of poetry, exclaim, 
that here is still his country, 

' Zealous, yet modest ; innocent, though free ; 
Patient of toil ; serene amidst alarms ; 
Inflexible in faith ; invincible in arms.' 








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